Meta's new social app Threads hides a trap. Deleting an account will also lose Instagram.

CTOnews.com, July 6 (Xinhua)-- Meta (formerly Facebook) launched a new social app, Threads, on July 5, which is seen as a competitor to Twitter and developed by Meta's Instagram team. According to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the app attracted more than 11 million users within seven hours of launch.

What many users may not know, however, is that once you log in to Threads using your Instagram account, you cannot log out of your Threads account alone unless you delete the Instagram account at the same time. This provision is stated in Meta's supplementary privacy policy, but not conspicuously.

Threads is a stand-alone application, but requires users to log in using an Instagram account. After logging in, users can post text, pictures, videos and other content on Threads and interact with their friends on Instagram. Threads also provides some features that are different from Instagram, such as setting personalized status, using theme colors, and so on.

If you want to temporarily disable your Threads account, you can select the option "disable personal data" in the application settings, which will not affect your Instagram account. But if users want to delete their Threads account completely, they must also delete their Instagram account, which means they will lose all their content and contacts on Instagram.

It is not clear why Meta tightly binds Threads to Instagram, perhaps to take full advantage of Instagram's 2 billion user base. CTOnews.com believes that this is obviously inconvenient and troublesome for users, especially for new users who just want to give Threads a try. Meta should provide an option for users to delete their Threads account separately and keep their Instagram account.