Threads Will Finally Let Users Delete Their Accounts Without Losing Instagram Too

Once you’re in you can’t get out

When Meta introduced Threads in July, intended to be a rival to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, it quickly became the most rapidly downloaded app in history.

But the momentum did not hold. Users complained that the platform had fewer features than some of the other new platforms competing to be the New Twitter. It lacked topic tags, direct messaging and any way to access content from a desktop. (Threads has since introduced a web version.)

Another key complaint: Many users who had spent years carefully curating their Instagram accounts joined Threads on a whim only to find that they could not delete one without giving up the other, too.

Instagram said early on that it was investigating a fix to the issue, but it took until Monday night for Mr. Mosseri to officially announce the news, “based on feedback from our Threads community.”

The problem of privacy

The question of deletion has also played into a bigger question of Meta’s handling of data collection and privacy.

In May, the company was fined a record $1.3 billion and ordered to stop sending data collected on Facebook users in Europe to the United States, and the debut of Threads was postponed in Europe, in part, because of rules in the region around data, according to an interview with Mr. Mosseri.

Britain’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, said on Tuesday that it had been “clear” with Meta that users should not have to sacrifice using one service to be removed from another.

Still fighting it out to be the New Twitter

Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last year, users unimpressed with some of its changes have searched for an alternative. But no clear challenger has emerged — though platforms such as Mastodon, Bluesky and, yes, Threads, are still vying for their favor.

Along with the deletion feature, Mr. Mosseri unveiled another update, one that will show posts that Threads posts directly on Meta’s other platforms, Facebook and Instagram. But he shot down speculation that the app would add direct messaging, another function common to social media apps like Instagram and, yes, Twitter.

“We’re not building DMs into Threads,” he said.