As there was no option for users to deactivate their Threads account without also deleting their Instagram account, Meta came under criticism after introducing its text-based social network Threads in July. By December, the company plans to launch a separate account deactivation for Threads.
Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy officer for product, stated at TechCrunch Disrupt last week that Meta is striving to offer the actual deletion feature of a Threads account by December.
Protti claimed that because Threads is connected to Instagram, the business thought carefully at first about how to handle delete requests. He emphasized that separating those two accounts at launch was technically difficult. In the end, the company released capabilities including the ability to make an account secret or inactive.
“Technically, it was quite difficult to allow the cancellation of a separate Threads account without simultaneously immediately deleting your entire Instagram account. Because of this, we took special care to make sure users could still exercise their right to delete content by deactivating their account to sort of hide all content, making it private, or removing specific threads, according to Protti.
He added that while Meta is working on integrating Threads with the fediverse, the organization is also considering issues like what occurs when a Threads post is transferred to another server and subsequently deleted by the author.
Threads swiftly surpassed the 100 million sign-up milestone after its July launch. However, the platform’s appeal has declined during the past few months. Even though the firm has added highly desired features like a following feed, a web app, and full-text search, the degree of engagement isn’t what Meta had hoped for. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram Stories, said that the firm has to provide an edit button for postings, roll out better suggestions for accounts, and make messaging simpler.
According to a report provided by Insider Intelligence today, Threads has 23.7 million monthly active users in the United States and currently has a smaller user base than Reddit and Twitter.