How Meta Is Trying to “Hook” Users Leaving Threads, the Twitter Rival Platform

Threads, the Twitter alternative from Meta, launched with huge fanfare and added more than 100 million users – but they’re not staying.

A few weeks after the launch, which saw many Instagram users flock to the new platform, Facebook’s mother company Meta is trying to convince those users to stick around.

“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” Mark Zuckerberg told employees in an internal company town hall, in an audio heard by Reuters.

While Zuckerberg considers the dropoff in Threads users normal, the company is trying to convince them using so-called “retention-driving hooks”.

What exactly Meta will do to convince people to use Threads instead of Twitter is unclear, though Chief Product Officer Chris Cox mentioned they’re working on “making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads”.

Of course, the fact that you can’t delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram could also be called a “hook”.

“You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account,” is a statement buried deep in the Threads privacy policy but one that hasn’t escaped media attention. 

That hasn’t stopped people from finding ways around it.

YouTuber Pixel & Bracket posted a tutorial on how to delete a Threads account without deleting Instagram but unfortunately their instructions merely mean deactivating the account, not fully deleting it. 

Also read: How To Download All Your Instagram Data

Fortunately, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced on Threads that Meta is aware of this problem and is working on a solution to allow users to delete their Threads account independently.

Here are the steps to deactivate your Threads account:

• Go to your Threads Profile tab.
• Tap the two lines icon and go to Settings.
• Select “Account” and choose “Deactivate profile.”

Keep it mind it will be reactivated automatically if you ever log in again on Threads – just like on Facebook.

Also read: The BBC Threads Movie Isn’t About the Twitter Clone: It’s the Most Haunting Nuclear War Movie Ever Made