Threads will soon let you delete account with your nuking Instagram profile

Threads update: Meta introduced Threads by Instagram, or simply Threads app, back in July this year. At the time, the company was criticised for linking Threads account to Instagram in a way that deleting the former also deleted the latter. Now, word is that Meta is planning to rectify this issue by rolling out an update that will allow Threads users to delete their accounts without nuking their Instagram accounts.

Meta‘s Chief Privacy Officer, Michel Protti, while speaking at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference last week said that the company is working on introducing a deletion feature that will allow Threads users to delete their accounts without impacting the linked Instagram accounts, much like it happens in case of other apps within Meta’s ambit, such as Messenger and Facebook. However, the company isn’t expected to roll out this feature anytime soon. Instead, Threads users will have to wait until December 2023 to be able to access this feature.

Protti told the publication that Meta had ‘deliberated a lot about how to tackle deletion requests at the beginning’.  He also said at the time of launch, it was ‘technically challenging to separate’ to separate Instagram and Threads accounts, which is why the company rolled out the features to deactivate Threads account or change the settings to private.

“Technically, it was extremely challenging to allow deletion of a separate Threads account without also deleting your overall Instagram account out of the gate. So, we paid particular attention to ensuring the user could still exercise their deletion rights, by deactivating the account to sort of hide all content, setting it to private or deleting individual threads,” the Meta executive told the publication.

How to deactivate your Threads profile

Meanwhile, if you find yourself in a situation where you want to deactivate your Threads account, here is what you need to do: