Meta launched Threads on Wednesday night, a text app grafted onto Instagram and aimed squarely at a Twitter weakened by a year of Elon Musk. It passed 100 million sign-ups in five days, faster than any app before it, helped by the fact that signing up takes one tap from an Instagram account. By the weekend the first complaint had arrived, and it was about the reverse journey: you cannot delete a Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account with it.
Why
Because Threads is not a separate account. It is, in the words of Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri, “powered by Instagram”, and for now the two profiles are treated as one; the deletion screen in Threads says as much, in small type. Mosseri said the company is looking at a way to delete a Threads profile on its own. In the meantime users can deactivate — Settings → Account → Deactivate profile — which hides the profile and posts without touching Instagram, and can delete individual posts.
What Threads is, and is not
Posts of up to 500 characters with links, photos, GIFs and video up to five minutes; replies, reposts and quotes; an algorithmic feed of accounts you follow mixed with accounts Meta thinks you will like. It is not, at launch, several things Twitter is: there are no direct messages, no hashtags, no feed limited to accounts you follow, no trending topics and no desktop version beyond a read-only page. Meta says these are coming. Threads is also not available in the European Union, because its data-sharing with Instagram would fall foul of the Digital Markets Act — which is itself an admission of how much data the two apps share.
What it collects
The App Store privacy label, which developers fill in themselves, lists for Threads: health and fitness data, financial information, browsing history, precise location, purchases, contacts, search history, user content and identifiers — the same list as Instagram’s, because it is the same account. Twitter’s equivalent list is shorter. Whether Threads actually gathers health data or merely reserves the right is not something the label distinguishes.
In Bangladesh
Threads works here, and with 50 million Instagram accounts in the country it filled up overnight with the same people, saying the same things, minus the character limit. The two practical notes: deactivate rather than delete if you are trying it out, because the delete takes your Instagram with it; and understand that the “Threads” identity is Instagram in a different coat. If your Instagram is a business page, Threads is now a business page too, with the same audience and the same exposure.
Source: The Verge, via Prothom Alo.
