Meta’s Thread will soon offer its users the option to delete their account without any impact on their Instagram profile, as revealed by a Meta executive at a recent event. The company is actively developing a distinct delete feature for Threads, expected for potential release by December this year. Threads, introduced by Meta in July as a competition to Elon Musk’s X (formerly called Twitter), swiftly gained popularity, with over 10 million sign-ups within its initial hours of launch.
Previously, a significant drawback of Meta’s Threads was its account deletion policy, where deleting a Threads account meant mandatory deletion of the associated Instagram account due to tight integration. However, it appears that Meta is addressing this issue as well.
According to a TechCrunch report, Meta’s chief Privacy Officer (Product), Michel Protti, announced at TechCrunch Disrupt that the company is actively working on a feature allowing users to delete their Threads account independently without affecting their Instagram account. This new feature is expected to be rolled out by December later this year.
These features will be available in which versions?
While he did not specify whether this feature will be exclusive to Android or iOS apps or if it will also extend to the desktop version, he did elaborate that the task of implementing this feature is extremely challenging. As of now, users have the option to deactivate their Threads account and hide the content, all without affecting their Instagram account. Additionally, users can choose to mute their Threads account, preventing notifications.
He also mentioned that the company is actively working on integrating Threads with the fediverse, an interconnected network of independent servers designed for smooth communication. This aligns with Meta's earlier statement about Threads being compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. However, Meta is carefully assessing situations where a user opts to delete a Threads post after it has been transmitted to another server.
As mentioned earlier, Threads was introduced by Meta in July of this year and quickly amassed over 10 million users within the initial hours of its launch.