19 ms·

Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

252 points by jmsflknr 3y ago

kgantchev 3y ago
Unable to create a new IG account for my business. Keeps telling me my IP is suspicious. There is no way to reach a human and complain. It's absolutely useless!
lakomen 3y ago
Fuck Meta, Threads, Instagram and Facebook. I had to get this off my chest. Facebook especially is a content propagation platform for right wing ideology, almost as much as TikTok. At least if you're in Germany. The amount of racist, black people hating, pro AfD propaganda, directly or indirectly is absurd. And all reports of those get rejected. There are Facebook groups, public, with post after post of foreigner and ethnic hate. Meta does absolutely nothing. In fact, it even suggests me more of content like it. Instagram has hardcore porn, when reported, the report is rejected. The while company needs to be sued into bankruptcy.
lencastre 3y ago
New duck account then?
ssl232 3y ago
People jumping ship from Twitter for this thinking they're going to be treated any better are probably in line for a nasty surprise.
- timbre1234 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - churchill 3y ago
    On the news tonight, anyone I don't like is a Goebbels Jr.
    - martin8412 3y ago
      https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m443/elon-musk-george-soros-antisemitic-tweets https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m443/elon-musk-george-soro...
      - aydyn 3y ago
        way to prove his point my dude
  - aydyn 3y ago
    go back to reddit
  - zeofig 3y ago
    Yeah zuckyboy is totally a better dude than the muskrat
- johndevor 3y ago
  People gonna people.
- aglasgow000 3y ago
  The people jumping are from insta and brands. Don't think anyone else cares about this.
  - xii23 3y ago
    not true. almost all my mutuals in twitter created threads account as soon as possible (probably because of the novelty)
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      Please report back in a week how many of them are posting more on Threads than Twitter. I saw something similar with signups, but content, not so much, not yet at least.
- LittleShaman 3y ago
  It's quite easy doing better than Twitter considering the antics since the acquisition.
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    Have you seen Threads and Bluesky? Honestly the algorithm content they feed you makes Twitter look outstanding. Insane how poor it is, Bluesky has an excuse because they're starting from zero but IG has a decade of data on my account and its awful.
- bjohnson225 3y ago
  I thought the quotes on the BBC article were quite revealing: > Mr Zuckerberg said keeping the platform "friendly... will ultimately be the key to its success". > But Mr Musk responded: "It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram." If Threads is a fractionally less toxic version of Twitter, it’ll do quite well.
  - rvz 3y ago
    > If Threads is a fractionally less toxic version of Twitter, it’ll do quite well. It will eventually be equally as toxic. Twitter started in a calm setting until the ads, politics, outrage filled it up. Threads will have ads soon and will apply the same Instagram algorithms it had before to promote verified outrage. Trump is also on both Twitter and Threads. As long as he and other Instagram users are on Threads, then the outrage town hall will continue and will be no better than Twitter.
    - bjohnson225 3y ago
      > Trump is also on both Twitter and Threads. As long as he and other Instagram users are on Threads, then the outrage town hall will continue and will be no better than Twitter. I don't know, I'm in Europe, I follow zero explicitly political people yet US politics dominates my Twitter feed. I don't get that on Instagram which is all I need to make the service more enjoyable and to feel less toxic than Twitter. The outrage town hall will of course continue on Threads, but hopefully with only those who are activley seeking it.
  - nmltprand 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - bjohnson225 3y ago
      > What will people talk about if Instagram is friendly Anything that's not the current American culture wars? The same things most people talk about in their lives when not throthing at the mouth on Twitter. (i.e. comedy, sports, tech, food, animals, jobs, cars, etc.) And, of course, culture wars will still be discussed, but it doesn't need promoting to those not interested in arguing such things on social media.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  No one is really jumping from Twitter, we saw last week during the rate limit debacle that everyone who was shouting loudly about how great Bluesky was are all still addicted to Twitter.
- grishka 3y ago
  There's going to be ActivityPub federation. You'll be able to have it your way, especially without the forced recommended posts in the feed, as soon as it launches.
  - wetpaws 3y ago
    [dead]
  - rchaud 3y ago
    AP federation just means you can spam your posts outside the Threads walled garden, eventually. It doesn't guarantee anything about how the native client will choose to show posts.
    - grishka 3y ago
      Being able to not miss out on others' updates and participate in discussions is good enough for me.
martin_a 3y ago
So, if the accounts are linked closely to each other, and an Instagram account is a necessity for a Threads "account", are those really "signups" or more like... logins into another view of the same service? These numbers seem overblown.
- chinathrow 3y ago
  Yeah like Zuck said your Instagram followers are already there - so the question is: if you gain a follower on threads, is it also a new follower on Instagram?
  - saurik 3y ago
    AFAIK, no. Your Instagram followers also aren't already there, FWIW: when you first log in it asks if you want to follow some or all of the same people you follow on Instagram; if you follow someone who isn't on Threads yet it becomes a "Pending" follow and will automatically follow them once they join. I am pretty sure the follow lists are then disjoint. (There actually seems to be a bug in this whole scheme btw wherein there is a window during the onboarding where your account is Private and if people follow you during that moment they become Requested follows you have to Confirm even if your account is immediately public and is swarmed with hundred of followers. I thankfully noticed and dug out this stragglers.) The users and accounts are definitely otherwise the same, though: you can't even AFAIK sign up in the Threads app... you can only log in using an existing Instagram account that is already logged in on that same device, which seems to just use shared keychain access to the login tokens from the other app. I had an old version of Instagram installed and realized I couldn't even log in to Threads until I upgraded it.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > if you follow someone who isn't on Threads yet it becomes a "Pending" follow Apparently this also spams them with an invite, which may be unpopular.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Not really because weirdly you have to start your followers from zero. Which seems like a misstep because now my "Threads" account has 10% of the followers of my IG/Twitter.
harry105 3y ago
Glad I made a separate IG account just for Threads
- tomschwiha 3y ago
  That's a win-win for the stats of Instagram / Threads
- KSPAtlas 3y ago
  You're still giving users and money to Meta, which is probably gonna try use threads to do an EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish) on the Fediverse (Group of server software like Mastodon and Lemmy which are able to talk between each other, mastodon is probably the better twitter alternative, just try not to join the biggest instances and join a smaller one, experience is better)
  - harry105 3y ago
    True, I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, I just wanted to see what it was like. I used one of the apple hide-my-emails just in case I didn't want anything to do anything with it. From what I can see, threads doesn't use hashtags, which is a little confusing. I did give mastodon a go, but I found it confusing, when I make account is that for that specific instance? If I choose one instance, can I see things from a different instance?
    - imchillyb 3y ago
      > when I make account is that for that specific instance? If I choose one instance, can I see things from a different instance? >> When you first create your account, you choose a server — similar to how you choose to open an email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or wherever — which generates your profile’s address. So, for example, if you sign up for Mastodon via the climate justice server, then your address will be @[your username]@climatejustice.social. But no matter which server you sign up with, you will be able to communicate with users from any other server, just like how Gmail users email Hotmail users and vice versa. However, some servers might have blocked other servers (perhaps if it’s an unsavory group), which would mean you can’t communicate with anyone from the blocked server. >> https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/
bayindirh 3y ago
Reading this didn't surprise me a bit. Actually it makes sense from a user lock-in/enshittification perspective. It just bolsters the fact that I'm not install threads, ever.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I get the feeling that this is a skunkworks project for Meta. The fact that it's completely blocked in the European Union suggests that either they're doing something really bad (worse than Facebook), or they don't have the resources allocated to this project for their lawyers to greenlight it. And it just being a product built on top of the Instagram database would also fit in with that idea.
  - jaclaz 3y ago
    According to this: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-threads-app-in-the-eu-irish-dpc-says-metas-new-twitter-rival-wont-be-launched-here/a1927220337.html https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-... it seem like the Irish Authority isn't happy at all with the way the data is "commingled" with Instagram. Could the fact that deleting the Threads account will also remove the Instagram one be connected to having this Threads thingy appear as a part/feature of Instagram instead of a self-standing platform?
ochronus 3y ago
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire
safety1st 3y ago
Meta will nuke your Instagram account for basically anything, including for no reason at all. I have like 50 followers, 10 photos, and check my IG once every week or two - haven't posted anything in months. Meta has banned me twice for unspecified policy violations (both times I had to send them a selfie and got reinstated, and there was no way to ask a human what these policies were). I suspect they'll ban/unban me again someday, oh well, it's Meta and I don't care, I just make sure not to use them for anything essential...!
- nmltprand 3y ago
  They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web and possibly resell that information to third parties. Also a great dataset for "AI" training, so your face can appear in modified form in laundered pictures.
  - heywhatupboys 3y ago
    god save GDPR!
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > god save GDPR! When it will be enforced ...
  - unmole 3y ago
    > They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web How on earth does facial recognition help with tracking someone across the web?
    - Santosh83 3y ago
      If you've uploaded photos of yourself on other services and those services have agreements among themselves to share each others' (anonymized?) data, then you can be tracked across services through, among other things, your photos.
samwillis 3y ago
its clear Meta are trying quite hard to piggyback Threads off the more palatable brand of Instagram rather than Facebook. However ultimately it's all still the same company, the same data mining and ad/influencing platform. It's an interesting strategy, the app on the Apple App Store is published by "Instagram Inc" rather than Meta, prominently named as "Threads, an Instagram App". They could have launched it as a completely separate brand, but that would have required marketing such as "the new app from Meta", and everyone more closely associates Meta with Facebook. It's quite surprising they never launched a microblogging network before, but I suppose they have never really launched a new network, only ever acquired them... does that show that they feel threatened, have weakening market position, and need a new direction?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Well this is an alternative to Twitter, a company which lied about needing phone numbers for 2FA and then used them for targeted ads. > does that show that they feel threatened, have weakening market position, and need a new direction? It shows they are trying to capitalize on Twitter’s dumpster fire, and for the first time there is a mainstream competitor. Sorry Mastodon. Every time Twitter bugs out, people will go to Threads. Some may never go back to Twitter.
  - twelve40 3y ago
    > Every time Twitter bugs out, people will go to Threads Wait, I thought it's supposed to be Bluesky? Three months ago they were totally probably maybe going to incinerate Twitter.
    - colejohnson66 3y ago
      Bluesky still has a waiting list. Threads doesn't.
      - 3y ago
meepmorp 3y ago
So, when is BlueSky finally getting out of beta?
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Might take quite a while. Bluesky is currently only at 266k registered users and there were already some scaling issues when Twitter introduced the rate limits. Although I think they now have improved the way that the service can be scaled up based on demand.
  - somsak2 3y ago
    just drop a failwhale in for that true early Twitter experience
albertopv 3y ago
So Threads numbers are basically fake? Just Instagram users?
- flipdot 3y ago
  Not neccessarily. You do need to download the Threads app and make an account (or rather a sub-account, since it’s tied to your Instagram account).
Emma_Goldman 3y ago
I still can't believe it's app-only, that there's no desktop version. I refuse to wall off parts of the internet into silos that I have to enter through downloadable portals.
- thomond 3y ago
  But it does have a website: https://www.threads.net/@zuck https://www.threads.net/@zuck Is the website read-only or something?
  - Eavolution 3y ago
    God that logo is abysmal.
  - Emma_Goldman 3y ago
    Click through onto specific posts, and it reads: "Get the app to like, reply and post." I suppose this is so it can, like Twitter, be shared and embedded elsewhere for reference. There is no general landing page if you go to threads.net.
    - thomond 3y ago
      I can click through to post and view the replies. I'm in the EU so I can't create an account, that might explain the difference.
  - Santosh83 3y ago
    It shows a blank page on Firefox, though displays as it should on Edge/Chrome. I guess they simply haven't considered deploying for non-Chromium engines yet.
- snailmailman 3y ago
  It seems like it’s going to eventually have activitypub / mastodon support? I’m hoping I can just follow everyone from Threads in my existing mastodon app. (Or from the webui of the instance I use) Lots of instances are anti-meta integration. But imo the protocol is open specifically for this kinda thing. I don’t have to use Facebook’s garbage, but I can still get content from people who do.
Mordisquitos 3y ago
Much as I despise Meta, I have to say that the article doesn't really say the same thing as the headline and it appears to be pure clickbait to me. Compare: > Meta will nuke your Instagram account if you delete Threads profile with > Meta explains: “You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” The title seems to imply that a user deleting their Threads profile may more-or-less inadvertently delete their Instagram account. This is not supported by the quote from Meta, and there is no indication that there's any procedure to initiate deletion of the Threads profile which would then trigger the Instagram deletion. An accurate headline would be, for example, «Meta will delete your Threads profile only if you nuke your Instagram account». Is that shitty user-hostile behaviour from Meta? Absolutely yes — but not that shitty.
- isaacfrond 3y ago
  I don't see it Meta will delete Threads profile only if you nuke your Instagram account and Meta will nuke your Instagram account if you delete Threads profile mean exactly the same. In fact they are logically the same. It's like A iff B, means the same as B iff A.
  - chazhaz 3y ago
    > you nuke your Instagram account > Meta will nuke your Instagram account > exactly the same
  - concordDance 3y ago
    The distinction is around intent. The parent's phrasing makes it seem as if its done for technical reasons (e.g. your threads profile and Instagram profile are actually the same thing) while the headline makes it seem like a business choice.
    - lifeonlars 3y ago
      Obviously if there was a business choice that you should be able to do this the supposed technical obstacles could be worked around.
Zealotux 3y ago
I guess I'm safe since I live in a literal hell for Meta (GDPR-compliant country).
- slig 3y ago
  So much that they didn't even bother to launch in the EU https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-threads-app-in-the-eu-irish-dpc-says-metas-new-twitter-rival-wont-be-launched-here/a1927220337.html https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-...
- hnbad 3y ago
  Arguably, Mastodon is also problematic from a GDPR perspective as ActivityPub doesn't offer a way to control data once it has left the instance (which is the entire point of federation). But something tells me Meta didn't have to hold off on publishing Threads in the EU because it uses ActivityPub. And this account merging may indeed also be in violation.
  - tpxl 3y ago
    > ActivityPub doesn't offer a way to control data once it has left the instance Nothing offers a way to control data once you post it publicly though? You could host a public mastodon with federation off and the amount of data exposed is not really going to be different than if you federate.
  - dawidpotocki 3y ago
    Considering that EU has its own Mastodon instance, I don't think there is too much to worry about. https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about
dragosion 3y ago
I sure hope so. No more welcome back with 1 click?
jwilk 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230706071833/https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/threads-delete-profile-instagram-meta/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230706071833/https://techcrunc...
klntsky 3y ago
"If you die in metaverse, you die in real life"
hnbad 3y ago
Completely tangential to the article itself, TechCrunch's privacy controls are also extremely user hostile. First it prompts you with the usual consent banner but of course doesn't provide a button to refuse all unless you click through to a second screen (this is in violation of the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines btw, the "reject all" button needs to be front and center and must be given as much weight as an "accept all" button if present). Then it shows me the article but the article embeds something (presumably a tweet or a Facebook post or something else) and tells me "To view this this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Click here to do so.". So instead of letting me decide in place that I want to agree to that one embed or even all embeds from the same source, I have to go somewhere else. And I don't even know what I'm missing out on and of course there's no direct link to whatever is being included either. Finally if I click the link it takes me to a page with a big toggle switch that asks me to agree to all social advertising partners. Not just social networks either, most of these are just advertising and analytics. And I can't pick and choose either, I have to give a blanket consent without being informed of the details and purposes, which, again, blatantly violates the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines. I'm not pointing out that these are in violation because I think US companies should be beholden to EU law. I'm pointing this out because it demonstrates how blatantly user hostile this is.
- tpxl 3y ago
  > I'm not pointing out that these are in violation because I think US companies should be beholden to EU law US companies doing business in the EU should be and are beholden to the EU law.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    I didn't say I don't think that. I said that's not why I'm pointing it out.
lionkor 3y ago
A family member of mine had 4000+ posts of their art on their instagram, with quite a few followers, and one day the account just got nuked. That's it, not even a message beyond "broke policies".
- somsak2 3y ago
  were they paying for their account? you can't expect much if you're not a paying customer.
  - lionkor 3y ago
    hundreds or thousands of hours of ad watch time, plus content which made others watch ads, ...
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      Ignore that dude. This "you're not paying for it" bullshit needs to end. Yes, we are paying for it. We are paying with our attention and our sharecropping labor. We give them a mind to infect and they sell that to advertisers. We give them our content and they use that to attract other minds to sell to advertisers. Any suggestion that those aren't a valuable payments shows a complete lack of understanding of the last 20 years of online "progress" and also just makes them look foolish.
CharlesDodgson 3y ago
let's make this platform a little more 'sticky'
stareatgoats 3y ago
Since FB this spring deleted my account since 16 years for no reason (that they would say) I have to my surprise experienced a kind of freedom, a calm serenity. After the initial feeling of being insulted and shut out from my circle of friends and family through no fault of mine I have gradually come to realize a few things: 1. there are other, better ways to stay in contact with with people I care about than through group messages and posts (which is actually an insidious sort of indirect messaging when you think about it). 2. as users of these mega-services we are largely like puppets on a string, victims of the latest fads among governments and advertisers. 3. Meta is, and always was, an unethical service that profits off the wide dissemination of our most private information. And profiting off pure scams, for example those that target poor and naive people with promises of untold riches through crypto schemes as testified by various celebrities (that have had their pictures stolen). [0] We are nearing the point where we can, nay should, en masse desert these manipulative megaservices like Meta, Twitter, Youtube et al. They represented a certain phase in the history of internet, and as all things, their hegemonies must come to an end. We can for example willfully trigger the algorithms that shut our accounts down, as it is just about the only statement we are left with. For the sake of our own serene peace of mind if nothing else. [0] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-pulls-out-all-stops-to-delay-cryptocurrency-scam-case-20220919-p5bj8c.html https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-pulls-out-all-sto...
- hulitu 3y ago
  > We are nearing the point where we can, nay should, en masse desert these manipulative megaservices like Meta, Twitter, Youtube et al You're right, but, ironically, that's why this new products exists. CIA and NSA needs twitter and when Elon pulled the plug, they just found another provider.
- footlose_3815 3y ago
  Facebook is a glorified address book. The things we value the most on there are our connections, which is something we've always managed to do before the internet. People clutching their pearls on social media need to stop.
  - 3y ago
justinclift 3y ago
Wonder if this will turn out to be a case of illegal tying of one product to another? Might be some anti-trust interest in this. :)
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Didn't facebook get away with doing that exact thing with whatsapp? They promised not to combine the phone number data with their other data and did exactly that. Maybe they got a slap on the wrist fine.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Yeah, it'd be good if the governments that had issues with it changed their position to require divestment of WhatsApp after facebook pulled that shit. Pity that didn't happen, so yeah... they got away with it. :(
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
This creates an interesting dynamic. 1. You've trapped people who don't want Threads on Threads, where they can complain about it. 2. And meanwhile people curious about Threads can't try it because they don't want to be stuck having it. Let's see how it works out.
- somsak2 3y ago
  you're not trapped, you can deactivate a threads account without impact on Instagram
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    deactivate? does that claw back all my Threads content and metadata from Meta? i'm gonna go out on a limb and guess "no".
npteljes 3y ago
Meta nuked my wife's private instagram account for no reason. It had a bunch of photos, a bunch of friends, and a bunch of direct messages. How on earth did this even register, I have no idea. We appealed and they graciously let her back in.
kayxspre 3y ago
I am facing an inverse of this situation. I have long deleted Instagram account, and when I try to give Threads a try, it told me to "Login via Instagram". Sure, I could create another account for Instagram and Threads, but given that I cannot reuse my username as per Meta's policy, I'm not willing to give it a try until I can come to terms that I won't be able to use my original username and move on
mrjin 3y ago
Does it matter?
swayvil 3y ago
Punishment for breaking a rule without telling you what rule you broke. This has become common in social media. And we seem to be ok with it. It's clearly a very fucked up thing. The only time I ever saw it irl was from a legit crazy person. So are we all crazy now?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Not everyone is okay with it but the only way past it is regulating the tech sector and HN specifically is VERY against that, Republicans are against regulation that doesn't constrain the freedoms of people who aren't acceptable to religious fundamentalists, and Democrats seem to only care about preventing a progressive party from ever existing.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    The republicans worship tyrannosaurus rex. The democrats worship hivemind. I think I saw this scifi movie before. It was all dystopian and 70s.
Karellen 3y ago
OK, I'm just old and don't understand the draw of walled-garden social media, but why do people need different walled gardens for (micro)blogs, pictures, and video? Or, why doesn't Meta make the Facebook platform better at doing the things that Instagram and now Threads do, instead of creating separate platforms for each? If the goal is to get people to sign up and connect with each other, doesn't network theory tell us that one platform with 100% of the users is more valuable than two networks each with 75% of the users and a 50% overlap? As a user, if you know a bunch of people on one platform, why not just post your text thoughts, pictures, and videos, all to the same place? OK, maybe your goal is to get as many total people following you as possible, and there are some people on platform A who aren't on platform B, and vice-versa, so you're on both. But why post half your stuff to A and half to B, rather than posting everything to both?
- rchaud 3y ago
  > why do people need different walled gardens for (micro)blogs, pictures, and video 10 years ago, Facebook was where young people would post PG-rated pics (family members in the network). IG would be where they'd post themselves acting stupid. 20 years ago, they'd have used Facebook for this, because it was restricted to university students, no real risk of leakage to the outside world.
  - basch 3y ago
    I’d say originally Instagram was a mobile camera app when fzz as rebook had a horrendous mobile experience. “It just worked” and it was stripped down and simple. Take a photo, post it. Now Instagram is feature bloated, so it’s time to launch a primitive stripped down platform again to see what direction this one grows in, instead of trying to redesign the old one. It’s a soft reboot.
  - Karellen 3y ago
    Isn't that what groups are for? Facebook has groups, right? You and your mates create a private group for pics of each other acting stupid, and that's where you post them. How is the leakage risk different from using a different walled garden?
flipdot 3y ago
I feel like the HN title here is misleading. You can’t delete your Threads profile, you can only delete your Instagram account and your Threads sub-account will follow. Also this is quite clearly stated inside the Threads app: “Some settings, such as deleting your account, apply to both Threads and Instagram and can be managed on Instagram”. Deactivating your Threads account, on the other hand, will not affect your Instagram account in any way, this warning is there in the corresponding Settings section as well.
duped 3y ago
You can't even log into threads without an instagram account
MilnerRoute 3y ago
"But Instagram is looking into changing that."
MilnerRoute 3y ago
Instagram head of content posted on Threads: "To clarify, you can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content, you can set your profile to private, and you can delete individual threads posts – all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately."
- metalliqaz 3y ago
  sounds reasonable TBH
  - brewdad 3y ago
    Depends on if they are looking into it or “looking into it” the same way I might buy a private island in the South Pacific.
jprd 3y ago
It's a trap!
ezfe 3y ago
If you can deactivate your account, I don't see what the problem is - they're the same login after all so I don't see why it would be surprising that you can't delete the login to one without deleting the other. The purpose of deleting an account (versus deactivating) is to remove your records with that company so what would the purpose of deleting just a Threads account be?
- jjulius 3y ago
  >The purpose of deleting an account (versus deactivating) is to remove your records with that company so what would the purpose of deleting just a Threads account be? ... to delete your records on Threads.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    To set “isDeleted” to true on Threads.
    - barbariangrunge 3y ago
      Not something more ambiguous like “nonPublished”?
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    I mean, you can't delete your account on Google Sheets but leave Google Docs intact. So it really depends on whether you think you have a separate Threads account, or just an Instagram account that Threads uses. It seems like the latter is the case though.
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      It's not about the login details. It's about removing the content.
      - ipsum2 3y ago
        Following the same analogy, it's like removing spreadsheets from Google Sheets.
standardUser 3y ago
They obviously piggy-backed excessively off of Instagram and the limitations are very annoying (at least for now). I wonder how much of the decision to link Threads so tightly with Instagram was for technical reasons and speed to launch. Because I could also see them wanting to use their Instagram user base to seed the new app, as opposed to their older and probably more conservative Facebook user base.
- sockaddr 3y ago
  Yup. It would have been an absolute minion-fest if they piped in the FB crowd.
- bonestamp2 3y ago
  While all of that is true, the real reason is that Threads was actually an instagram feature several years ago that they previously killed off. They were able to bring it back quickly and make some changes to capitalize on twitter's meltdown.
unboxingelf 3y ago
just facebook doing facebook things.
aslilac 3y ago
Doesn't look good that this is front page news fresh off the launch, lmao
aslilac 3y ago
Doesn't look good that this is front page news fresh off the launch, lmao
dontknowwhyihn 3y ago
This looks like it’s purely about gaming signup metrics for Threads. Make it easy to try, create a huge disincentive to cancel, and suddenly you have a wildly successful, “sticky” app.
- tenpies 3y ago
  Next step "due to incredibly good reception, we are auto-creating a Thread account for anyone signed up in any of our other platforms - saving our users billions of minutes!".
- paganel 3y ago
  Similar to the strategy for Google+ back in the day. It didn't work back then, big chances are it won't work now, either.
  - metalliqaz 3y ago
    I read a horror story on Slashdot about a user losing their Gmail account because of some issue on Google+ and that was it for me. I stayed away. My email account was too precious to risk.
    - fswd 3y ago
      my OpenAI API account got nuked due to a missing organization error when I switched clients one night. I just got an email back from their support... took them 2 months. For reference, ChatGPT API has been out for only 3 months.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Google+ was a product trying to break into a market where the market didn't really need another product. Threads is obviously looking to take up the mantle for where Twitter is dying, and people are actively looking for a Twitter replacement. So comparing Threads to G+ is just not a good comparison.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    Threads is being bootstrapped off an existing billion user social network and completely aligns to Meta's core values and business model. It's pretty much the complete opposite of Google+.
slt2021 3y ago
rule of thumb is never register with your name, always use throwaway emails and accounts. that way social media will never have leverage over you. threads app gathers more data than TikTok ( https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/1676748411071266816?s=46&t=ZACeP3X-ZelzZfMwWOr1wA https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/167674841107126681... )
- rvz 3y ago
  Agreed with almost everything except for: > threads app gathers more data than TikTok Now you need a credible source for that claim. Not defending either of them but such claims require credible evidence.
  - amusingimpala75 3y ago
    Apple App Store or Google Play Store privacy listing for what data it can collect. It’s mind boggling.
  - slt2021 3y ago
    This is basic hygiene when installing new App https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/1676748411071266816?s=46&t=ZACeP3X-ZelzZfMwWOr1wA https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/167674841107126681...
- mcculley 3y ago
  Assume that these apps can deanonymize you. One would have to go to extreme lengths to not leak identity.
  - slt2021 3y ago
    Agree but it is a lot of work to deanonimyze, when they already have people giving up all the data. At least I try not to be the lowest hanging fruit in deanonimyzation problem
- motoxpro 3y ago
  What permission on that list in the tweet is unreasonable? They are all just features in the app.
smsm42 3y ago
I wonder though why did they use IG platform and not FB platform? Has FB platform grown so bad that it can't be used for implementing new things anymore?
- skilled 3y ago
  Young people don’t use FB as much as they do Instagram. They want hype not a grandma writing a Thread on how she misses the good old days.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Instagram has a better brand for this sort of thing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  FB and meta are both tarnished names. I’ve had non techies tell me that they are trying this “new twitter app from instagram” vs something made by meta.
- bonestamp2 3y ago
  Too many people hate Facebook, while Instagram is still relatively cool.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  Yeah definitely because FB brand is trashed. Instagram still has decent branding and many people don't even realize it's the same company. I also imagine their accounts infrastructure is more app-driven on Instagram and was easier to integrate into a new platform without inheriting ~20 years (wow!) of tech debt from FB.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Because Instagram is pseudo-anonymous and Facebook is not. They wanted Twitter users many of whom use pseudoynms to migrate across.
davelondon 3y ago
Clearly this is just something they haven't got around to implementing yet.
- jachee 3y ago
  Surely. I imagine it's just like their iPad apps. Should be here any day.
- marcod 3y ago
  That's exactly what I thought. Yes, the release was rushed, so they haven't gotten to implementing all the features yet. If it stays around long enough for them to open it up to Europe they will have to support the RTBF. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621778 PS: How dare you reason with the lynch mob ;) https://youtu.be/Q3eTSbC3neA?t=90 https://youtu.be/Q3eTSbC3neA?t=90
paxys 3y ago
From what I have seen so far Threads seems to have been an incredibly rushed and premature launch, done directly to counter Twitter's missteps from the last few weeks. And the decision is proving to be the absolute correct one. What I don't understand is why Bluesky didn't seize the opportunity first. People were literally banging on their doors begging to be let in and they continued to go "sorry we are exclusive, invites only". Now no one gives a shit.
- fullshark 3y ago
  We'll never know if Elon would have shot himself more in the foot though without a clear competitive threat. Maybe some more time would have paid off? Though I agree that rate limiting + need to be signed in catastrophe over July 4 weekend seemed to be the sweet spot.
- dmonitor 3y ago
  It’s actually crazy how slow bluesky’s rollout has been. I can see why they want some level of exclusivity (so that people want to join, and when they join can immediately hook up with their friend who invited them), but they really need to open the faucet a bit.
  - gonzo41 3y ago
    Surprise! 30 million people wanted to join BlueSky because they wanted a twitter alternative that wasn't filled with hate fill toxic weirdo's. Now Meta's got em. 4D chess move there guys.
- bonestamp2 3y ago
  I'm not sure if this is the reason, but BlueSky doesn't appear to have a trust/safety moderation team that can operate at full scale. I mean, neither does twitter, but Jack understands that some people do want that. On the other hand, it's much easier for Meta to launch since they already have those people in place for Instagram and Facebook.
  - threeseed 3y ago
MilnerRoute 3y ago
Instagram head of content posted on Threads: "To clarify, you can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content, you can set your profile to private, and you can delete individual threads posts – all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately."
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612434
alpark3 3y ago
I just want a web client :(
TechBro8615 3y ago
Oh no, I can't delete my account with one day of posting history. So what? And you can only use your Instagram username anyway, so it's not like you can say you accidentally picked an embarrassing name and want to delete it.
- ketralnis 3y ago
  > So what Well for starters https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-data-deleted/ https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-dat... https://epic.org/california-consumer-privacy-act-ccpa/ https://epic.org/california-consumer-privacy-act-ccpa/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://www.mondaq.com/canada/privacy-protection/1074916/the-right-to-erasure-of-personal-information-in-canada-between-fact-and-fiction https://www.mondaq.com/canada/privacy-protection/1074916/the...
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    Threads is part of Instagram, and I can delete my Instagram account, right? Seems compliant to me.
smcf 3y ago
I don't have an Instagram account so I tried to create one to try Threads. I used my real name and phone number but it was instantly banned as soon as it was created. I submitted an appeal, which required a selfie taken while holding a piece of paper with my username on it, which I provided. The next day I got an automated email that the selfie wasn't "acceptable" (no further elaboration) and that I was permanently banned from Instagram with no route for further appeal. So overall, not the most seamless onboarding experience I've ever seen.
- lakomen 3y ago
  Facebook has the dating feature. I created a profile. Gave some up- and downvotes and comments. After a while of doing so a pop-up with "dating needs to be a safe place" I need to verify my identity via a video call. Are you shitting me? I didn't even do VideoID when I created a new bank account, surely I'll trust the biggest data grabbing company on the planet and give them money worth content in form of VideoID. My account was an Instagram account from 2015 which I used to create the Facebook account. That was my 2nd attempt on dating. The 1st was uninteresting. A month later, after I had deleted my instagram account I tried again and the result is what I wrote just now. The 1st attempt had no such obstacles.
- nojs 3y ago
  For what it’s worth, the same thing happened to me and after about 4 or 5 rounds of take a selfie, get approved, get instantly banned again I was finally approved for good. And it has worked ever since.
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  When I signed up for Twitter I had something similar happen. Banned for life by an automated system, probably because I was using a vpn, with no option to appeal
- dorkwood 3y ago
  I couldn’t log in to Instagram for over a year due to a bug with my account. At first, there was no recourse. Then, they released Meta Verified, which offered customer support for a monthly subscription fee. It took about 50 emails back and forth (most some version of “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do”) before they finally fixed it for me. I deleted it shortly after. I really hope all the developers and artists I follow don’t move to Threads. I’m not exactly jumping at the chance to use an Instagram product again.
SergeAx 3y ago
What will happen if I try to delete my Facebook account? They send my chat logs to my parents? Kill a kitten? Starve a child?
frankreyes 3y ago
Ah, that's why it doesn't work in Europe.
patoroco 3y ago
The reason for not entering in the EU?
ClassyJacket 3y ago
It's also impossible to deactivate your Instagram account. I tried the other day, and they immediately sent me an email saying my account had been "reactivated at my request". Slimy, unethical company. And this is a widely known issue for months or years.
jug 3y ago
FWIW they are apparently working on this one but the reason behind as it is now is because it's technically an extension of Instagram.
hparadiz 3y ago
Threads isn't allowing porn or NSFW content so it's pretty much dead on arrival for many communities. Even just Ukraine war news is in many cases too violent for Meta. The over moderation by modern platforms makes the Internet pretty worthless. There's frank discussions I simply can't have on them because the topic is too sensitive and invites trolls from all sides to abuse the content moderation system.
- paxys 3y ago
  It has the same rules as Instagram, so that isn't a surprise. Such content can always be somewhere else on the Fediverse, and Threads itself will start supporting it soon.
browningstreet 3y ago
I recently created an Instagram account for a project I’m involved in. Username has the word “climate” in it. I was insta-limited. They tell me I can appeal but that link errors out. Ironically, my Twitter equivalent wasn’t. I have no idea what to think or suggest, but I say ugh to Big Social.
tlhunter 3y ago
Sounds almost like Google+ tactics
Dirak 3y ago
This has already be debunked https://www.threads.net/t/CuXRXDdNOtH/ https://www.threads.net/t/CuXRXDdNOtH/ You can "deactivate" your account and delete all of your posts individually, which is effectively equivalent to deleting your Threads account.
- ehnto 3y ago
  Not to the EU, or Australian privacy laws either I suspect. You need to be able to request your data be removed entirely. From a practical sense it isn't equivelant either, because if I want to reduce my risk of being affected by a Threads data breach, totally valid reason to delete an account you don't use, then my data would need to be removed entirely.
9991 3y ago
Not your server, not your account.

252 points by jmsflknr 3y ago

Unable to create a new IG account for my business. Keeps telling me my IP is suspicious. There is no way to reach a human and complain. It's absolutely useless!

lakomen 3y ago

Fuck Meta, Threads, Instagram and Facebook. I had to get this off my chest. Facebook especially is a content propagation platform for right wing ideology, almost as much as TikTok. At least if you're in Germany. The amount of racist, black people hating, pro AfD propaganda, directly or indirectly is absurd. And all reports of those get rejected. There are Facebook groups, public, with post after post of foreigner and ethnic hate. Meta does absolutely nothing. In fact, it even suggests me more of content like it. Instagram has hardcore porn, when reported, the report is rejected. The while company needs to be sued into bankruptcy.

lencastre 3y ago

New duck account then?

ssl232 3y ago

People jumping ship from Twitter for this thinking they're going to be treated any better are probably in line for a nasty surprise.

timbre1234 3y ago
[flagged]
- churchill 3y ago
  On the news tonight, anyone I don't like is a Goebbels Jr.
  - martin8412 3y ago
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m443/elon-musk-george-soros-antisemitic-tweets https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m443/elon-musk-george-soro...
    - aydyn 3y ago
      way to prove his point my dude
- aydyn 3y ago
  go back to reddit
- zeofig 3y ago
  Yeah zuckyboy is totally a better dude than the muskrat
johndevor 3y ago
People gonna people.
aglasgow000 3y ago
The people jumping are from insta and brands. Don't think anyone else cares about this.
- xii23 3y ago
  not true. almost all my mutuals in twitter created threads account as soon as possible (probably because of the novelty)
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    Please report back in a week how many of them are posting more on Threads than Twitter. I saw something similar with signups, but content, not so much, not yet at least.
LittleShaman 3y ago
It's quite easy doing better than Twitter considering the antics since the acquisition.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Have you seen Threads and Bluesky? Honestly the algorithm content they feed you makes Twitter look outstanding. Insane how poor it is, Bluesky has an excuse because they're starting from zero but IG has a decade of data on my account and its awful.
bjohnson225 3y ago
I thought the quotes on the BBC article were quite revealing: > Mr Zuckerberg said keeping the platform "friendly... will ultimately be the key to its success". > But Mr Musk responded: "It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram." If Threads is a fractionally less toxic version of Twitter, it’ll do quite well.
- rvz 3y ago
  > If Threads is a fractionally less toxic version of Twitter, it’ll do quite well. It will eventually be equally as toxic. Twitter started in a calm setting until the ads, politics, outrage filled it up. Threads will have ads soon and will apply the same Instagram algorithms it had before to promote verified outrage. Trump is also on both Twitter and Threads. As long as he and other Instagram users are on Threads, then the outrage town hall will continue and will be no better than Twitter.
  - bjohnson225 3y ago
    > Trump is also on both Twitter and Threads. As long as he and other Instagram users are on Threads, then the outrage town hall will continue and will be no better than Twitter. I don't know, I'm in Europe, I follow zero explicitly political people yet US politics dominates my Twitter feed. I don't get that on Instagram which is all I need to make the service more enjoyable and to feel less toxic than Twitter. The outrage town hall will of course continue on Threads, but hopefully with only those who are activley seeking it.
- nmltprand 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bjohnson225 3y ago
    > What will people talk about if Instagram is friendly Anything that's not the current American culture wars? The same things most people talk about in their lives when not throthing at the mouth on Twitter. (i.e. comedy, sports, tech, food, animals, jobs, cars, etc.) And, of course, culture wars will still be discussed, but it doesn't need promoting to those not interested in arguing such things on social media.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
No one is really jumping from Twitter, we saw last week during the rate limit debacle that everyone who was shouting loudly about how great Bluesky was are all still addicted to Twitter.
grishka 3y ago
There's going to be ActivityPub federation. You'll be able to have it your way, especially without the forced recommended posts in the feed, as soon as it launches.
- wetpaws 3y ago
  [dead]
- rchaud 3y ago
  AP federation just means you can spam your posts outside the Threads walled garden, eventually. It doesn't guarantee anything about how the native client will choose to show posts.
  - grishka 3y ago
    Being able to not miss out on others' updates and participate in discussions is good enough for me.

martin_a 3y ago

So, if the accounts are linked closely to each other, and an Instagram account is a necessity for a Threads "account", are those really "signups" or more like... logins into another view of the same service? These numbers seem overblown.

chinathrow 3y ago
Yeah like Zuck said your Instagram followers are already there - so the question is: if you gain a follower on threads, is it also a new follower on Instagram?
- saurik 3y ago
  AFAIK, no. Your Instagram followers also aren't already there, FWIW: when you first log in it asks if you want to follow some or all of the same people you follow on Instagram; if you follow someone who isn't on Threads yet it becomes a "Pending" follow and will automatically follow them once they join. I am pretty sure the follow lists are then disjoint. (There actually seems to be a bug in this whole scheme btw wherein there is a window during the onboarding where your account is Private and if people follow you during that moment they become Requested follows you have to Confirm even if your account is immediately public and is swarmed with hundred of followers. I thankfully noticed and dug out this stragglers.) The users and accounts are definitely otherwise the same, though: you can't even AFAIK sign up in the Threads app... you can only log in using an existing Instagram account that is already logged in on that same device, which seems to just use shared keychain access to the login tokens from the other app. I had an old version of Instagram installed and realized I couldn't even log in to Threads until I upgraded it.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > if you follow someone who isn't on Threads yet it becomes a "Pending" follow Apparently this also spams them with an invite, which may be unpopular.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Not really because weirdly you have to start your followers from zero. Which seems like a misstep because now my "Threads" account has 10% of the followers of my IG/Twitter.

harry105 3y ago

Glad I made a separate IG account just for Threads

tomschwiha 3y ago
That's a win-win for the stats of Instagram / Threads
KSPAtlas 3y ago
You're still giving users and money to Meta, which is probably gonna try use threads to do an EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish) on the Fediverse (Group of server software like Mastodon and Lemmy which are able to talk between each other, mastodon is probably the better twitter alternative, just try not to join the biggest instances and join a smaller one, experience is better)
- harry105 3y ago
  True, I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, I just wanted to see what it was like. I used one of the apple hide-my-emails just in case I didn't want anything to do anything with it. From what I can see, threads doesn't use hashtags, which is a little confusing. I did give mastodon a go, but I found it confusing, when I make account is that for that specific instance? If I choose one instance, can I see things from a different instance?
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    > when I make account is that for that specific instance? If I choose one instance, can I see things from a different instance? >> When you first create your account, you choose a server — similar to how you choose to open an email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or wherever — which generates your profile’s address. So, for example, if you sign up for Mastodon via the climate justice server, then your address will be @[your username]@climatejustice.social. But no matter which server you sign up with, you will be able to communicate with users from any other server, just like how Gmail users email Hotmail users and vice versa. However, some servers might have blocked other servers (perhaps if it’s an unsavory group), which would mean you can’t communicate with anyone from the blocked server. >> https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/

bayindirh 3y ago

Reading this didn't surprise me a bit. Actually it makes sense from a user lock-in/enshittification perspective. It just bolsters the fact that I'm not install threads, ever.

Hamuko 3y ago
I get the feeling that this is a skunkworks project for Meta. The fact that it's completely blocked in the European Union suggests that either they're doing something really bad (worse than Facebook), or they don't have the resources allocated to this project for their lawyers to greenlight it. And it just being a product built on top of the Instagram database would also fit in with that idea.
- jaclaz 3y ago
  According to this: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-threads-app-in-the-eu-irish-dpc-says-metas-new-twitter-rival-wont-be-launched-here/a1927220337.html https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-... it seem like the Irish Authority isn't happy at all with the way the data is "commingled" with Instagram. Could the fact that deleting the Threads account will also remove the Instagram one be connected to having this Threads thingy appear as a part/feature of Instagram instead of a self-standing platform?

ochronus 3y ago

Jumping from the frying pan into the fire

safety1st 3y ago

Meta will nuke your Instagram account for basically anything, including for no reason at all. I have like 50 followers, 10 photos, and check my IG once every week or two - haven't posted anything in months. Meta has banned me twice for unspecified policy violations (both times I had to send them a selfie and got reinstated, and there was no way to ask a human what these policies were). I suspect they'll ban/unban me again someday, oh well, it's Meta and I don't care, I just make sure not to use them for anything essential...!

nmltprand 3y ago
They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web and possibly resell that information to third parties. Also a great dataset for "AI" training, so your face can appear in modified form in laundered pictures.
- heywhatupboys 3y ago
  god save GDPR!
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > god save GDPR! When it will be enforced ...
- unmole 3y ago
  > They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web How on earth does facial recognition help with tracking someone across the web?
  - Santosh83 3y ago
    If you've uploaded photos of yourself on other services and those services have agreements among themselves to share each others' (anonymized?) data, then you can be tracked across services through, among other things, your photos.

samwillis 3y ago

its clear Meta are trying quite hard to piggyback Threads off the more palatable brand of Instagram rather than Facebook. However ultimately it's all still the same company, the same data mining and ad/influencing platform. It's an interesting strategy, the app on the Apple App Store is published by "Instagram Inc" rather than Meta, prominently named as "Threads, an Instagram App". They could have launched it as a completely separate brand, but that would have required marketing such as "the new app from Meta", and everyone more closely associates Meta with Facebook. It's quite surprising they never launched a microblogging network before, but I suppose they have never really launched a new network, only ever acquired them... does that show that they feel threatened, have weakening market position, and need a new direction?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
janalsncm 3y ago
Well this is an alternative to Twitter, a company which lied about needing phone numbers for 2FA and then used them for targeted ads. > does that show that they feel threatened, have weakening market position, and need a new direction? It shows they are trying to capitalize on Twitter’s dumpster fire, and for the first time there is a mainstream competitor. Sorry Mastodon. Every time Twitter bugs out, people will go to Threads. Some may never go back to Twitter.
- twelve40 3y ago
  > Every time Twitter bugs out, people will go to Threads Wait, I thought it's supposed to be Bluesky? Three months ago they were totally probably maybe going to incinerate Twitter.
  - colejohnson66 3y ago
    Bluesky still has a waiting list. Threads doesn't.
    - 3y ago

meepmorp 3y ago

So, when is BlueSky finally getting out of beta?

Hamuko 3y ago
Might take quite a while. Bluesky is currently only at 266k registered users and there were already some scaling issues when Twitter introduced the rate limits. Although I think they now have improved the way that the service can be scaled up based on demand.
- somsak2 3y ago
  just drop a failwhale in for that true early Twitter experience

albertopv 3y ago

So Threads numbers are basically fake? Just Instagram users?

flipdot 3y ago
Not neccessarily. You do need to download the Threads app and make an account (or rather a sub-account, since it’s tied to your Instagram account).

Emma_Goldman 3y ago

I still can't believe it's app-only, that there's no desktop version. I refuse to wall off parts of the internet into silos that I have to enter through downloadable portals.

thomond 3y ago
But it does have a website: https://www.threads.net/@zuck https://www.threads.net/@zuck Is the website read-only or something?
- Eavolution 3y ago
  God that logo is abysmal.
- Emma_Goldman 3y ago
  Click through onto specific posts, and it reads: "Get the app to like, reply and post." I suppose this is so it can, like Twitter, be shared and embedded elsewhere for reference. There is no general landing page if you go to threads.net.
  - thomond 3y ago
    I can click through to post and view the replies. I'm in the EU so I can't create an account, that might explain the difference.
- Santosh83 3y ago
  It shows a blank page on Firefox, though displays as it should on Edge/Chrome. I guess they simply haven't considered deploying for non-Chromium engines yet.
snailmailman 3y ago
It seems like it’s going to eventually have activitypub / mastodon support? I’m hoping I can just follow everyone from Threads in my existing mastodon app. (Or from the webui of the instance I use) Lots of instances are anti-meta integration. But imo the protocol is open specifically for this kinda thing. I don’t have to use Facebook’s garbage, but I can still get content from people who do.

Mordisquitos 3y ago

Much as I despise Meta, I have to say that the article doesn't really say the same thing as the headline and it appears to be pure clickbait to me. Compare: > Meta will nuke your Instagram account if you delete Threads profile with > Meta explains: “You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” The title seems to imply that a user deleting their Threads profile may more-or-less inadvertently delete their Instagram account. This is not supported by the quote from Meta, and there is no indication that there's any procedure to initiate deletion of the Threads profile which would then trigger the Instagram deletion. An accurate headline would be, for example, «Meta will delete your Threads profile only if you nuke your Instagram account». Is that shitty user-hostile behaviour from Meta? Absolutely yes — but not that shitty.

isaacfrond 3y ago
I don't see it Meta will delete Threads profile only if you nuke your Instagram account and Meta will nuke your Instagram account if you delete Threads profile mean exactly the same. In fact they are logically the same. It's like A iff B, means the same as B iff A.
- chazhaz 3y ago
  > you nuke your Instagram account > Meta will nuke your Instagram account > exactly the same
- concordDance 3y ago
  The distinction is around intent. The parent's phrasing makes it seem as if its done for technical reasons (e.g. your threads profile and Instagram profile are actually the same thing) while the headline makes it seem like a business choice.
  - lifeonlars 3y ago
    Obviously if there was a business choice that you should be able to do this the supposed technical obstacles could be worked around.

Zealotux 3y ago

I guess I'm safe since I live in a literal hell for Meta (GDPR-compliant country).

slig 3y ago
So much that they didn't even bother to launch in the EU https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-threads-app-in-the-eu-irish-dpc-says-metas-new-twitter-rival-wont-be-launched-here/a1927220337.html https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-...
hnbad 3y ago
Arguably, Mastodon is also problematic from a GDPR perspective as ActivityPub doesn't offer a way to control data once it has left the instance (which is the entire point of federation). But something tells me Meta didn't have to hold off on publishing Threads in the EU because it uses ActivityPub. And this account merging may indeed also be in violation.
- tpxl 3y ago
  > ActivityPub doesn't offer a way to control data once it has left the instance Nothing offers a way to control data once you post it publicly though? You could host a public mastodon with federation off and the amount of data exposed is not really going to be different than if you federate.
- dawidpotocki 3y ago
  Considering that EU has its own Mastodon instance, I don't think there is too much to worry about. https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about

dragosion 3y ago

I sure hope so. No more welcome back with 1 click?

jwilk 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230706071833/https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/threads-delete-profile-instagram-meta/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230706071833/https://techcrunc...

klntsky 3y ago

"If you die in metaverse, you die in real life"

hnbad 3y ago

Completely tangential to the article itself, TechCrunch's privacy controls are also extremely user hostile. First it prompts you with the usual consent banner but of course doesn't provide a button to refuse all unless you click through to a second screen (this is in violation of the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines btw, the "reject all" button needs to be front and center and must be given as much weight as an "accept all" button if present). Then it shows me the article but the article embeds something (presumably a tweet or a Facebook post or something else) and tells me "To view this this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Click here to do so.". So instead of letting me decide in place that I want to agree to that one embed or even all embeds from the same source, I have to go somewhere else. And I don't even know what I'm missing out on and of course there's no direct link to whatever is being included either. Finally if I click the link it takes me to a page with a big toggle switch that asks me to agree to all social advertising partners. Not just social networks either, most of these are just advertising and analytics. And I can't pick and choose either, I have to give a blanket consent without being informed of the details and purposes, which, again, blatantly violates the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines. I'm not pointing out that these are in violation because I think US companies should be beholden to EU law. I'm pointing this out because it demonstrates how blatantly user hostile this is.

tpxl 3y ago
> I'm not pointing out that these are in violation because I think US companies should be beholden to EU law US companies doing business in the EU should be and are beholden to the EU law.
- hnbad 3y ago
  I didn't say I don't think that. I said that's not why I'm pointing it out.

lionkor 3y ago

A family member of mine had 4000+ posts of their art on their instagram, with quite a few followers, and one day the account just got nuked. That's it, not even a message beyond "broke policies".

somsak2 3y ago
were they paying for their account? you can't expect much if you're not a paying customer.
- lionkor 3y ago
  hundreds or thousands of hours of ad watch time, plus content which made others watch ads, ...
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    Ignore that dude. This "you're not paying for it" bullshit needs to end. Yes, we are paying for it. We are paying with our attention and our sharecropping labor. We give them a mind to infect and they sell that to advertisers. We give them our content and they use that to attract other minds to sell to advertisers. Any suggestion that those aren't a valuable payments shows a complete lack of understanding of the last 20 years of online "progress" and also just makes them look foolish.

CharlesDodgson 3y ago

let's make this platform a little more 'sticky'

stareatgoats 3y ago

Since FB this spring deleted my account since 16 years for no reason (that they would say) I have to my surprise experienced a kind of freedom, a calm serenity. After the initial feeling of being insulted and shut out from my circle of friends and family through no fault of mine I have gradually come to realize a few things: 1. there are other, better ways to stay in contact with with people I care about than through group messages and posts (which is actually an insidious sort of indirect messaging when you think about it). 2. as users of these mega-services we are largely like puppets on a string, victims of the latest fads among governments and advertisers. 3. Meta is, and always was, an unethical service that profits off the wide dissemination of our most private information. And profiting off pure scams, for example those that target poor and naive people with promises of untold riches through crypto schemes as testified by various celebrities (that have had their pictures stolen). [0] We are nearing the point where we can, nay should, en masse desert these manipulative megaservices like Meta, Twitter, Youtube et al. They represented a certain phase in the history of internet, and as all things, their hegemonies must come to an end. We can for example willfully trigger the algorithms that shut our accounts down, as it is just about the only statement we are left with. For the sake of our own serene peace of mind if nothing else. [0] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-pulls-out-all-stops-to-delay-cryptocurrency-scam-case-20220919-p5bj8c.html https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-pulls-out-all-sto...

hulitu 3y ago
> We are nearing the point where we can, nay should, en masse desert these manipulative megaservices like Meta, Twitter, Youtube et al You're right, but, ironically, that's why this new products exists. CIA and NSA needs twitter and when Elon pulled the plug, they just found another provider.
footlose_3815 3y ago
Facebook is a glorified address book. The things we value the most on there are our connections, which is something we've always managed to do before the internet. People clutching their pearls on social media need to stop.
- 3y ago

justinclift 3y ago

Wonder if this will turn out to be a case of illegal tying of one product to another? Might be some anti-trust interest in this. :)

mrguyorama 3y ago
Didn't facebook get away with doing that exact thing with whatsapp? They promised not to combine the phone number data with their other data and did exactly that. Maybe they got a slap on the wrist fine.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Yeah, it'd be good if the governments that had issues with it changed their position to require divestment of WhatsApp after facebook pulled that shit. Pity that didn't happen, so yeah... they got away with it. :(

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

This creates an interesting dynamic. 1. You've trapped people who don't want Threads on Threads, where they can complain about it. 2. And meanwhile people curious about Threads can't try it because they don't want to be stuck having it. Let's see how it works out.

somsak2 3y ago
you're not trapped, you can deactivate a threads account without impact on Instagram
- asadotzler 3y ago
  deactivate? does that claw back all my Threads content and metadata from Meta? i'm gonna go out on a limb and guess "no".

npteljes 3y ago

Meta nuked my wife's private instagram account for no reason. It had a bunch of photos, a bunch of friends, and a bunch of direct messages. How on earth did this even register, I have no idea. We appealed and they graciously let her back in.

kayxspre 3y ago

I am facing an inverse of this situation. I have long deleted Instagram account, and when I try to give Threads a try, it told me to "Login via Instagram". Sure, I could create another account for Instagram and Threads, but given that I cannot reuse my username as per Meta's policy, I'm not willing to give it a try until I can come to terms that I won't be able to use my original username and move on

mrjin 3y ago

Does it matter?

swayvil 3y ago

Punishment for breaking a rule without telling you what rule you broke. This has become common in social media. And we seem to be ok with it. It's clearly a very fucked up thing. The only time I ever saw it irl was from a legit crazy person. So are we all crazy now?

mrguyorama 3y ago
Not everyone is okay with it but the only way past it is regulating the tech sector and HN specifically is VERY against that, Republicans are against regulation that doesn't constrain the freedoms of people who aren't acceptable to religious fundamentalists, and Democrats seem to only care about preventing a progressive party from ever existing.
- swayvil 3y ago
  The republicans worship tyrannosaurus rex. The democrats worship hivemind. I think I saw this scifi movie before. It was all dystopian and 70s.

Karellen 3y ago

OK, I'm just old and don't understand the draw of walled-garden social media, but why do people need different walled gardens for (micro)blogs, pictures, and video? Or, why doesn't Meta make the Facebook platform better at doing the things that Instagram and now Threads do, instead of creating separate platforms for each? If the goal is to get people to sign up and connect with each other, doesn't network theory tell us that one platform with 100% of the users is more valuable than two networks each with 75% of the users and a 50% overlap? As a user, if you know a bunch of people on one platform, why not just post your text thoughts, pictures, and videos, all to the same place? OK, maybe your goal is to get as many total people following you as possible, and there are some people on platform A who aren't on platform B, and vice-versa, so you're on both. But why post half your stuff to A and half to B, rather than posting everything to both?

rchaud 3y ago
> why do people need different walled gardens for (micro)blogs, pictures, and video 10 years ago, Facebook was where young people would post PG-rated pics (family members in the network). IG would be where they'd post themselves acting stupid. 20 years ago, they'd have used Facebook for this, because it was restricted to university students, no real risk of leakage to the outside world.
- basch 3y ago
  I’d say originally Instagram was a mobile camera app when fzz as rebook had a horrendous mobile experience. “It just worked” and it was stripped down and simple. Take a photo, post it. Now Instagram is feature bloated, so it’s time to launch a primitive stripped down platform again to see what direction this one grows in, instead of trying to redesign the old one. It’s a soft reboot.
- Karellen 3y ago
  Isn't that what groups are for? Facebook has groups, right? You and your mates create a private group for pics of each other acting stupid, and that's where you post them. How is the leakage risk different from using a different walled garden?

flipdot 3y ago

I feel like the HN title here is misleading. You can’t delete your Threads profile, you can only delete your Instagram account and your Threads sub-account will follow. Also this is quite clearly stated inside the Threads app: “Some settings, such as deleting your account, apply to both Threads and Instagram and can be managed on Instagram”. Deactivating your Threads account, on the other hand, will not affect your Instagram account in any way, this warning is there in the corresponding Settings section as well.

duped 3y ago

You can't even log into threads without an instagram account

MilnerRoute 3y ago

"But Instagram is looking into changing that."

MilnerRoute 3y ago

Instagram head of content posted on Threads: "To clarify, you can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content, you can set your profile to private, and you can delete individual threads posts – all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately."

metalliqaz 3y ago
sounds reasonable TBH
- brewdad 3y ago
  Depends on if they are looking into it or “looking into it” the same way I might buy a private island in the South Pacific.

jprd 3y ago

It's a trap!

ezfe 3y ago

If you can deactivate your account, I don't see what the problem is - they're the same login after all so I don't see why it would be surprising that you can't delete the login to one without deleting the other. The purpose of deleting an account (versus deactivating) is to remove your records with that company so what would the purpose of deleting just a Threads account be?

jjulius 3y ago
>The purpose of deleting an account (versus deactivating) is to remove your records with that company so what would the purpose of deleting just a Threads account be? ... to delete your records on Threads.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  To set “isDeleted” to true on Threads.
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    Not something more ambiguous like “nonPublished”?
- crazygringo 3y ago
  I mean, you can't delete your account on Google Sheets but leave Google Docs intact. So it really depends on whether you think you have a separate Threads account, or just an Instagram account that Threads uses. It seems like the latter is the case though.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    It's not about the login details. It's about removing the content.
    - ipsum2 3y ago
      Following the same analogy, it's like removing spreadsheets from Google Sheets.

standardUser 3y ago

They obviously piggy-backed excessively off of Instagram and the limitations are very annoying (at least for now). I wonder how much of the decision to link Threads so tightly with Instagram was for technical reasons and speed to launch. Because I could also see them wanting to use their Instagram user base to seed the new app, as opposed to their older and probably more conservative Facebook user base.

sockaddr 3y ago
Yup. It would have been an absolute minion-fest if they piped in the FB crowd.
bonestamp2 3y ago
While all of that is true, the real reason is that Threads was actually an instagram feature several years ago that they previously killed off. They were able to bring it back quickly and make some changes to capitalize on twitter's meltdown.

unboxingelf 3y ago

just facebook doing facebook things.

aslilac 3y ago

Doesn't look good that this is front page news fresh off the launch, lmao

aslilac 3y ago

Doesn't look good that this is front page news fresh off the launch, lmao

dontknowwhyihn 3y ago

This looks like it’s purely about gaming signup metrics for Threads. Make it easy to try, create a huge disincentive to cancel, and suddenly you have a wildly successful, “sticky” app.

tenpies 3y ago
Next step "due to incredibly good reception, we are auto-creating a Thread account for anyone signed up in any of our other platforms - saving our users billions of minutes!".
paganel 3y ago
Similar to the strategy for Google+ back in the day. It didn't work back then, big chances are it won't work now, either.
- metalliqaz 3y ago
  I read a horror story on Slashdot about a user losing their Gmail account because of some issue on Google+ and that was it for me. I stayed away. My email account was too precious to risk.
  - fswd 3y ago
    my OpenAI API account got nuked due to a missing organization error when I switched clients one night. I just got an email back from their support... took them 2 months. For reference, ChatGPT API has been out for only 3 months.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Google+ was a product trying to break into a market where the market didn't really need another product. Threads is obviously looking to take up the mantle for where Twitter is dying, and people are actively looking for a Twitter replacement. So comparing Threads to G+ is just not a good comparison.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Threads is being bootstrapped off an existing billion user social network and completely aligns to Meta's core values and business model. It's pretty much the complete opposite of Google+.

slt2021 3y ago

rule of thumb is never register with your name, always use throwaway emails and accounts. that way social media will never have leverage over you. threads app gathers more data than TikTok ( https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/1676748411071266816?s=46&t=ZACeP3X-ZelzZfMwWOr1wA https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/167674841107126681... )

rvz 3y ago
Agreed with almost everything except for: > threads app gathers more data than TikTok Now you need a credible source for that claim. Not defending either of them but such claims require credible evidence.
- amusingimpala75 3y ago
  Apple App Store or Google Play Store privacy listing for what data it can collect. It’s mind boggling.
- slt2021 3y ago
  This is basic hygiene when installing new App https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/1676748411071266816?s=46&t=ZACeP3X-ZelzZfMwWOr1wA https://twitter.com/deepaksonar911/status/167674841107126681...
mcculley 3y ago
Assume that these apps can deanonymize you. One would have to go to extreme lengths to not leak identity.
- slt2021 3y ago
  Agree but it is a lot of work to deanonimyze, when they already have people giving up all the data. At least I try not to be the lowest hanging fruit in deanonimyzation problem
motoxpro 3y ago
What permission on that list in the tweet is unreasonable? They are all just features in the app.

smsm42 3y ago

I wonder though why did they use IG platform and not FB platform? Has FB platform grown so bad that it can't be used for implementing new things anymore?

skilled 3y ago
Young people don’t use FB as much as they do Instagram. They want hype not a grandma writing a Thread on how she misses the good old days.
madeofpalk 3y ago
Instagram has a better brand for this sort of thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kjkjadksj 3y ago
FB and meta are both tarnished names. I’ve had non techies tell me that they are trying this “new twitter app from instagram” vs something made by meta.
bonestamp2 3y ago
Too many people hate Facebook, while Instagram is still relatively cool.
TechBro8615 3y ago
Yeah definitely because FB brand is trashed. Instagram still has decent branding and many people don't even realize it's the same company. I also imagine their accounts infrastructure is more app-driven on Instagram and was easier to integrate into a new platform without inheriting ~20 years (wow!) of tech debt from FB.
threeseed 3y ago
Because Instagram is pseudo-anonymous and Facebook is not. They wanted Twitter users many of whom use pseudoynms to migrate across.

davelondon 3y ago

Clearly this is just something they haven't got around to implementing yet.

jachee 3y ago
Surely. I imagine it's just like their iPad apps. Should be here any day.
marcod 3y ago
That's exactly what I thought. Yes, the release was rushed, so they haven't gotten to implementing all the features yet. If it stays around long enough for them to open it up to Europe they will have to support the RTBF. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621778 PS: How dare you reason with the lynch mob ;) https://youtu.be/Q3eTSbC3neA?t=90 https://youtu.be/Q3eTSbC3neA?t=90

paxys 3y ago

From what I have seen so far Threads seems to have been an incredibly rushed and premature launch, done directly to counter Twitter's missteps from the last few weeks. And the decision is proving to be the absolute correct one. What I don't understand is why Bluesky didn't seize the opportunity first. People were literally banging on their doors begging to be let in and they continued to go "sorry we are exclusive, invites only". Now no one gives a shit.

fullshark 3y ago
We'll never know if Elon would have shot himself more in the foot though without a clear competitive threat. Maybe some more time would have paid off? Though I agree that rate limiting + need to be signed in catastrophe over July 4 weekend seemed to be the sweet spot.
dmonitor 3y ago
It’s actually crazy how slow bluesky’s rollout has been. I can see why they want some level of exclusivity (so that people want to join, and when they join can immediately hook up with their friend who invited them), but they really need to open the faucet a bit.
- gonzo41 3y ago
  Surprise! 30 million people wanted to join BlueSky because they wanted a twitter alternative that wasn't filled with hate fill toxic weirdo's. Now Meta's got em. 4D chess move there guys.
bonestamp2 3y ago
I'm not sure if this is the reason, but BlueSky doesn't appear to have a trust/safety moderation team that can operate at full scale. I mean, neither does twitter, but Jack understands that some people do want that. On the other hand, it's much easier for Meta to launch since they already have those people in place for Instagram and Facebook.
- threeseed 3y ago

MilnerRoute 3y ago

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612434

alpark3 3y ago

I just want a web client :(

TechBro8615 3y ago

Oh no, I can't delete my account with one day of posting history. So what? And you can only use your Instagram username anyway, so it's not like you can say you accidentally picked an embarrassing name and want to delete it.

ketralnis 3y ago
> So what Well for starters https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-data-deleted/ https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-dat... https://epic.org/california-consumer-privacy-act-ccpa/ https://epic.org/california-consumer-privacy-act-ccpa/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://www.mondaq.com/canada/privacy-protection/1074916/the-right-to-erasure-of-personal-information-in-canada-between-fact-and-fiction https://www.mondaq.com/canada/privacy-protection/1074916/the...
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  Threads is part of Instagram, and I can delete my Instagram account, right? Seems compliant to me.

smcf 3y ago

I don't have an Instagram account so I tried to create one to try Threads. I used my real name and phone number but it was instantly banned as soon as it was created. I submitted an appeal, which required a selfie taken while holding a piece of paper with my username on it, which I provided. The next day I got an automated email that the selfie wasn't "acceptable" (no further elaboration) and that I was permanently banned from Instagram with no route for further appeal. So overall, not the most seamless onboarding experience I've ever seen.

lakomen 3y ago
Facebook has the dating feature. I created a profile. Gave some up- and downvotes and comments. After a while of doing so a pop-up with "dating needs to be a safe place" I need to verify my identity via a video call. Are you shitting me? I didn't even do VideoID when I created a new bank account, surely I'll trust the biggest data grabbing company on the planet and give them money worth content in form of VideoID. My account was an Instagram account from 2015 which I used to create the Facebook account. That was my 2nd attempt on dating. The 1st was uninteresting. A month later, after I had deleted my instagram account I tried again and the result is what I wrote just now. The 1st attempt had no such obstacles.
nojs 3y ago
For what it’s worth, the same thing happened to me and after about 4 or 5 rounds of take a selfie, get approved, get instantly banned again I was finally approved for good. And it has worked ever since.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
When I signed up for Twitter I had something similar happen. Banned for life by an automated system, probably because I was using a vpn, with no option to appeal
dorkwood 3y ago
I couldn’t log in to Instagram for over a year due to a bug with my account. At first, there was no recourse. Then, they released Meta Verified, which offered customer support for a monthly subscription fee. It took about 50 emails back and forth (most some version of “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do”) before they finally fixed it for me. I deleted it shortly after. I really hope all the developers and artists I follow don’t move to Threads. I’m not exactly jumping at the chance to use an Instagram product again.

SergeAx 3y ago

What will happen if I try to delete my Facebook account? They send my chat logs to my parents? Kill a kitten? Starve a child?

frankreyes 3y ago

Ah, that's why it doesn't work in Europe.

patoroco 3y ago

The reason for not entering in the EU?

ClassyJacket 3y ago

It's also impossible to deactivate your Instagram account. I tried the other day, and they immediately sent me an email saying my account had been "reactivated at my request". Slimy, unethical company. And this is a widely known issue for months or years.

jug 3y ago

FWIW they are apparently working on this one but the reason behind as it is now is because it's technically an extension of Instagram.

hparadiz 3y ago

Threads isn't allowing porn or NSFW content so it's pretty much dead on arrival for many communities. Even just Ukraine war news is in many cases too violent for Meta. The over moderation by modern platforms makes the Internet pretty worthless. There's frank discussions I simply can't have on them because the topic is too sensitive and invites trolls from all sides to abuse the content moderation system.

paxys 3y ago
It has the same rules as Instagram, so that isn't a surprise. Such content can always be somewhere else on the Fediverse, and Threads itself will start supporting it soon.

browningstreet 3y ago

I recently created an Instagram account for a project I’m involved in. Username has the word “climate” in it. I was insta-limited. They tell me I can appeal but that link errors out. Ironically, my Twitter equivalent wasn’t. I have no idea what to think or suggest, but I say ugh to Big Social.

tlhunter 3y ago

Sounds almost like Google+ tactics

Dirak 3y ago

This has already be debunked https://www.threads.net/t/CuXRXDdNOtH/ https://www.threads.net/t/CuXRXDdNOtH/ You can "deactivate" your account and delete all of your posts individually, which is effectively equivalent to deleting your Threads account.

ehnto 3y ago
Not to the EU, or Australian privacy laws either I suspect. You need to be able to request your data be removed entirely. From a practical sense it isn't equivelant either, because if I want to reduce my risk of being affected by a Threads data breach, totally valid reason to delete an account you don't use, then my data would need to be removed entirely.

9991 3y ago

Not your server, not your account.