Meta’s long-awaited Twitter alternative is here, and it’s called Threads. The new social media app launches at a time when alternatives, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spill, are vying for users who are dissatisfied with Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter’s user experience, with its newly introduced rate limits and an uptick in hate speech.
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, so the company’s attempt to recreate an online experience similar to Twitter is likely to attract plenty of normies, lurkers, and nomadic shitposters. Meta is working to incorporate Threads as part of the online Fediverse, a group of shared servers where users can interact across multiple platforms.
If you’re hesitant to share more of your personal data with a company on the receiving end of a billion dollar fine, that’s understandable. For those who are curious, however, here’s what we know about the service’s privacy policy, what data you hand over when you use Threads, and how it compares to the data collected by other apps.
Looking to further protect your privacy while using smartphone apps? For iPhone users, here’s how to set up and read your app privacy report. If you use an Android phone, here’s a bunch of settings worth checking out, including a privacy dashboard.
Threads
Threads (Android, Apple) potentially collects a wide assortment of personal data that remains connected to you, based on the information available in Apple’s App Store, from your purchase history and physical address to your browsing history and health information. Apple’s privacy labels for the App Store were first introduced in 2020. While the exact meaning of what’s collected remains murky, it’s a decent gauge of how data collection varies between apps.
“Sensitive information” is also listed as a type of data collected by the Threads app. Some information this could include is your race, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, and religion as well as your biometric data.
Threads falls under the larger privacy policy covering Meta’s other social media platforms. Want to see the whole thing? You can read it for yourself here. There’s one caveat, though. The app has a supplemental privacy policy that’s also worth reading. A noteworthy detail from this document is that while you’re able to deactivate your Threads account whenever, you must delete your Instagram if you fully want to delete your Threads account.
Below is all the data potentially collected by Threads that’s mentioned in the App Store. Do you have the Facebook or Instagram app on your phone? Keep in mind that this data collection by Meta is comparable to the data those apps collect about you.
For Android users, the Google Play Store doesn’t have the same app labels as Apple. Take a look under Data Safety to see what data Threads wants to collect on Android.
Data Linked to You
Third-Party Advertising:
- Purchases (Purchase History)
- Financial Info (Other Financial Info)
- Location (Precise Location, Coarse Location)
- Contact Info (Physical Address, Email Address, Name, Phone Number, Other User Contact Info)
- Contacts
- User Content (Photos or Videos, Gameplay Content, Other User Content)
- Search History
- Browsing History
- Identifiers (User ID, Device ID)
- Usage Data (Product Interaction, Advertising Data, Other Usage Data)
- Diagnostics (Crash Data, Performance Data, Other Diagnostic Data)
- Other Data