You can’t delete your Threads account without losing your Instagram too—for now

You’ve probably heard of Threads by now; in fact, there’s a good chance you’re already on the new social media platform. Launched just earlier this week by Instagram, it already has nearly a hundred million users. However, quite a number of people who signed up just to see what it was all about but decided against staying for the long term quickly found out that you can’t simply just delete your Threads account.

In fact, it turns out that in order to delete your Threads account, you’ll also have to delete your Instagram profile too. According to the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy, Threads is a ‘service provided by Instagram and is part of the Instagram platform. As such, Instagram users can easily create a Threads profile as part of their Instagram account, but because it’s tied to their Instagram you won’t be able to delete it by itself.

“You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account,” – Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy

Needless to say users weren’t pleased with this, seeing it perhaps as a way to lock users into a new platform without a choice. Meta though would see the issue with it, with Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri responding to it on Threads, saying:

Post by @mosseri

View on Threads

“I’ve been getting some questions about deleting your account. 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,” – Adam Mosseri

Unfortunately, Mosseri has not confirmed when they’ll allow users to delete their Threads account separately, but if you’re somehow who isn’t keen on Threads, there should soon be a way to get rid of it without having to delete your Instagram too.