Yeah this Threads issue is getting into the tin foil delusional territory now. Just as you said. They literally say "well use your Instagram acccount" of you bother to read their disclaimers they literally tell you that they are literally using your Instagram account. It's "Threads by Instagram". When you first log in it ll import all your Instagram contacts and you cna "follow" them. And if they don't have it yet it'll say "you'll follow as soon as they join threads" there is no "Shadow Threads account, because they are using the Instagram account.".

You can definitely be against threads and Meta. I Personally am not super thrilled about it. But there is way more than enough to hate a out meta and threads without making stuff up.

I think the difference is that the Threads user count keeps getting thrown around as an indicator of its success and viability, but it's not a great KPI.

I do think people are using this "realization" of accounts being automatically created as a conspiratorial gotcha, but it's still important to remind people of this scenario as they evaluate their prospects.

Exactly, and that's the reason why deleting a Threads account also deletes the Instagram account. Because there is only one account for both services.

Thank you for saying it.

It's a conspiracy just in the sense that they are seemingly counting these towards their growth numbers. If they're saying they have 20 million accounts, but they created 3/4 of them as placeholders, then no...they have 5 million accounts.