If you sensed a disturbance in the force last night, your intuition was not wrong. That’s right; a new social media platform was launched: Mark Zuckerberg’s newest terror, Threads. Threads is aimed at being a direct competitor to Twitter, which has been ruined since Elon Musk took over and instituted extremely boneheaded product choices like allowing the worst people you know to have preference in the algorithm, limiting/restricting DMs, firing the Trust and Safety Council (you know the people responsible for keeping Twitter safe), throttling how many Tweets you can send day, and, briefly, even requiring an account or be logged in in order to view Tweets. Basically, it’s not great. (Not that it was that great before Musk came on, but at least it was better than this.) So the world is primed for a new text-based social media platform where you can fire off inane thoughts, argue with people, and complain to airlines when your trip doesn’t go as planned, and Threads wants in on that action.
Threads already has millions of users because it’s an extension of Instagram, taking away the visual component and basically recreating Twitter. To sign up, you use your Instagram username, and the platform preloads everyone you’re following for you.
It also kind of sucks because it inserts random influencers and brands into your feed without you having to follow them. This is how Vice, some random Bravo fan account, and Kevin Jonas ended up on my Thread feed:
There’s no way to stop this except by manually blocking every brand, influencer, and yahoo you don’t want to see, and who has that kind of time on their hands!? (Me, obviously, but I’d rather spend that watching Law & Order SVU reruns, to be honest.) So if you downloaded Threads and were curious about what it was all about, instantly disliked it and wanted to delete it, I have good news and bad news for you: Yes, you can delete your Threads account but you have to delete your Instagram account as well, as they’re tied together. Boo!
Instagram’s official help page puts it plainly: “Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.”
So once you download the Threads app, you need to be very sure you want it because there’s no going back unless you also want to lose access to people’s comments on your brunch photos from 2014.
You can, however, deactivate your account and not lose access to your Instagram account but that’s not really the same thing is it?
The way I look at it, I’m one of those geriatric millennials whose had a Facebook account since 2005 so Zuck already knows all about me; it’s more that I simply do not need an uncurated feed where Kevin Jonas can infiltrate my senses at any time and things like this can pop up at any moment:
Your mileage, of course, may vary in your tolerance but be sure before you download Threads that you really want it. There’s no going back if you don’t.
(featured image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
