When Elon Musk took over Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg scrambled to get an app that could compete with Twitter out the door as quickly as possible. That app is called Threads, which released in July this year on Android and iOS to much fanfare, with many hoping it could become the first proper Twitter alternative.
Well, that didn't happen, and Threads lost over 80% of its userbase in a month after launch while Twitter, which got rebranded to X a couple of weeks after Threads' release, still continues to get similar levels of user engagement despite criticism over the rebranding.
But while many people stopped using Threads after the hype died down, they haven't been able to delete their Threads account. That's because every user's Threads profile was linked to their Instagram account, and disabling the former without also deleting the related Instagram account was not a choice.
Threads accounts will be deletable separately from Instagram accounts
However, that is all set to change before the end of this year, as Meta has revealed that it will introduce the option to delete Threads accounts without deleting a user's Instagram account at the same time.
No exact date has been provided, but according to Michel Protti, Meta's chief privacy officer for product, the separate account deletion feature will come to Threads by December. In the meantime, anyone who doesn't want their Threads account to be active can set it to private or deactivate it from their account settings.
Temporarily deactivating or setting your account private is a good alternative if you think you will want to give the platform another chance in the future. While its userbase has plumetted, Threads will continue to get regular updates with new features, such as the option to edit threads (for free, unlike X, which requires an $8 subscription for access to features like editing posts/tweets).
