Threads vs Bluesky

Meta says it may collect information even if you do not have an account or are not logged in. That means people can be tracked through partner sites, cookies, or others’ uploads without signing up.

Meta collects information you provide, your activity, device and network data, contacts, cookies, and data from partners and third parties. In practice, using Threads can feed a very broad profiling system.

Your activity, connections, location, and third-party activity may be used to personalize ads on and off Meta products. This expands profiling beyond what you do inside the app itself.

Content set as public can be seen, reshared, downloaded, and indexed off-platform, including by search engines and third parties. Once public, practical control over redistribution is limited.

Account or content deletion may take up to 90 days, plus up to another 90 days to clear backups. Some data may also be retained longer for legal, safety, or policy reasons.

Consumers can bring disputes in courts in their home country under local law, rather than being pushed into mandatory arbitration. This preserves a more user-friendly path for legal claims.

You keep ownership of your posts, but grant Meta a license to use them to provide and improve its services. This is common for social platforms, but still gives Meta broad operational rights over your content.

Meta shares information across its family of companies for safety, features, analytics, and product development. This can increase how much of your activity is linked across services.

Meta may remove content, suspend, or delete accounts for rule violations, inactivity, or legal reasons, sometimes without advance notice. While review options may exist, access can still be cut off broadly.

Meta states it does not sell your personal information or directly identify you to advertisers without permission. This is meaningful, though it still permits extensive ad targeting and reporting.

Users are offered tools to view, manage, download, port, and delete information. These controls can help users leave the service or audit what Meta holds about them.

Meta can update the terms with 30 days’ notice, and continued use means acceptance. This is less harsh than immediate unilateral changes, but still shifts the burden to users to monitor updates.

Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted and may be accessed for trust and safety purposes. Users should not treat Bluesky DMs as highly confidential communications.

Posts, profile, likes, follows, and blocks are public by design. This makes social graph and activity data broadly visible rather than private by default.

Even if you delete your account, copies of your content may remain on other services using the AT Protocol. In practice, deletion across the decentralized network may not be fully enforceable.

Most disputes must go through a 60-day informal process and then binding individual arbitration instead of court. This usually makes it harder to bring claims publicly or use normal court procedures.

Users generally cannot participate in class or representative actions against Bluesky. That reduces leverage for small-value claims that are impractical to pursue individually.

Bluesky says it does not sell or share personal data for targeted advertising. That's a meaningful privacy-positive commitment compared with many social platforms.

Depending on location, users can request access, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, objection, and review of automated decisions. These are substantial privacy rights, especially for users in stronger-regulation jurisdictions.

You keep ownership of what you post, but grant Bluesky a worldwide, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute, display, moderate, and promote that content. This is broad enough to cover product use and marketing uses.

Bluesky keeps data while your account is active and may retain it longer for trust and safety, disputes, audits, legal compliance, and claims. The policy does not give firm deletion deadlines for many categories.

If something goes wrong, Bluesky's financial liability is generally limited to US$100, except in narrow cases like fraud, gross negligence causing death or personal injury, or non-waivable statutory rights.

The terms explicitly say you can delete your account at any time in settings. A built-in deletion flow is more user-friendly than requiring manual support requests.

If your account is suspended or restricted, you can appeal using an in-app tool or email within two weeks. EU/EEA users also retain access to out-of-court review and local courts.