Is Facebook Threads invading your privacy?

Threads is a new app launched by Meta on 2023-07-05, to combat Twitter. As a latecomer to the market, Meta built a new app to compete with Twitter, and with no surprise, they already acquired over 100M subscribers in just 5 days - thanks to tight integration with Instagram. This is faster than ChatGPT, which took nearly 2 months to acquire 100M monthly users. Twitter has already taken a hit, and its traffic dwindled by as much as 10% in that same period.

The social media giant leveraged Instagram to attract new users and allow users to use the same Instagram username to signup on the Threads app. New users without an Instagram account have to set up an Instagram account to use the Threads app. The app allows users to automatically import Instagram followers into their Threads app. This is good and bad for the users. Once you sign up with Threads, you cannot delete your account unless you also delete your Instagram account. This is ugly as Meta is preventing new users from deleting their Threads account even if they don't like it. Users can still deactivate their Threads account and prevent others from seeing their posts, but their posts will continue to live on the server until they delete their account.

Threads is available on iOS and Android, and it is available in more than 100 countries. It is not yet available in the EU, so there is still a lot of room to grow. The reason for not being readily available in the EU is due to privacy reasons, as the app is closely tied to Instagram and won't allow users to delete their accounts. Also, the app collects a wide range of personal information including health, financial, contacts, location, and browsing history data which raises privacy concerns in the EU.

Much like Facebook, users can "like", "repost" and "quote" a thread, and promote users to receive many "likes" and "replies". Unlike Twitter, each post is limited to 500 characters more than Twitter's 280-character limit and can include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes long.