Well, it’s here! Threads, Meta's text-based social media app saw over 30 million users sign up within its first 24 hours. Were you one of them?
I was. My first impression of the app was nostalgic. It’s simple and user-friendly. It’s not too often we get a new social media platform. However, as with most things in life, it’s not without its downsides.
A couple of hours after signing up, I received a text from my friend with the following screenshot:
Yes, you read that right. If you didn’t, let me help.
You CAN NOT delete your Threads account without deleting your entire Instagram account.
This seemed to be a bit confusing for some who didn’t understand the difference between deletion and deactivation. While a DEACTIVATED account and its data can be reactivated, a DELETED account and its data can not be.
Determining the exact reason behind this situation is challenging at this early stage of Threads’ launch. It remains unclear whether the inability to delete a Thread account without deleting the entire Instagram account stems from the platform being in its early phase/lacking a solution, or if it is a deliberate strategy devised by Meta to maintain high user numbers.
In a post on Threads from Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, it may not actually be the latter.
While not being able to delete my Thread account isn’t that big of a deal to me (what’s one more possibly dead social media account in the void?), it seemed to be for many users when I brought the screenshot to people's attention via Twitter. Here’s what some users had to say:
“oh i hope they burn for this one fr”
“Yeah I ain’t hopping on that shit anytime soon.”
“we’ve been zuckerberg’ed”
“NOOOOOOO I’M TRAPPED NO NO NO NO NO”
And that is just 4 out of the 238 quote tweets I received on the tweet.
However, there is somewhat of a workaround. If you have a finsta (or a fake Instagram account), you could always sign up for Threads with that account.
Honestly, I have so many abandoned social media accounts that I don’t use anymore. What’s one more?
Maybe I’m naive for not giving a crap about whether I can delete my Threads account or not, what I found annoying was the lack of integration for GIFs.
Yes, GIFs. Twitter has an amazing set of tweet-creation tools.
Add Media
Add GIF
Add Poll
Emoji
Schedule Tweet
Tag Location
Bold & Italic font options
On Threads, there is only the option to add an attachment.
With that said, trying to upload a GIF the old-fashioned way by copy/paste or saving it to photos and uploading it from your phone, doesn’t seem to work (at least it didn’t for me).
I had to save the GIFs to my phone or computer and convert them to MP4 files, which worked.
So far that is my only complaint. However, others seem to have different feelings about their experience on Threads.
I’ve seen people wondering who all the people are on their timelines. Yet, I don’t see how that makes it any different from Twitter, or even Instagram. My Twitter nor Instagram feeds rarely ever show me people that I actually follow. To do that, you’ll either need to go to your ‘Following’ Tab on your Instagram Timeline:
Or the ‘Following’ Tab on Twitter:
If you do not have these tabs selected when scrolling on either of the timelines of these apps, you’re going to be seeing a lot of random content, suggested people you don’t know, or MAYBE things your mutuals follow or have liked.
Again, not something that I personally even noticed on Threads but to each their own.
So far I’m enjoying the fact that there is a new social media platform available. So far there are no ads! Which is a nice change of pace from Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and the other platforms riddled with ads. While I know that probably won’t last forever, I’m going to enjoy it while I can.
Who knows if Threads will be around a year from now, a month from now, or even tomorrow but it’s fun and exciting being a part of something new. It’s also interesting seeing the first real social media rivalry since the days of MySpace vs Facebook.
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