Twitter users may soon notice a decrease in their follower numbers, as the company’s CEO Elon Musk announced he intends to purge accounts that have been inactive for several years. The move is part of his effort to free up abandoned handles and improve the platform’s user experience.
According to Twitter’s help page, the company encourages people to actively log in and use Twitter when they register an account. To keep an account active, users must log in at least every 30 days. However, this policy seems to have changed recently, as an archived version of the same page shows that as of April 19th, 2023, the policy required users to log in every six months to keep their accounts active.
We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023
Musk’s tweet regarding the move was quite vague, so we are uncertain what qualifies as an inactive account, and how many years he means by “several years.” He also did not mention when the “purging” will begin.
In his Tweet replies, users expressed concern about what Musk’s plan would mean for accounts of deceased users, whose tweets may have historical or sentimental value. Some suggested that Twitter should create a way to memorialize these accounts, similar to what Facebook does. Musk responded to one of these concerns by saying that accounts of deceased users will be archived. However, he does not elaborate on what archiving means or how it will affect the visibility or accessibility of these accounts.
But it is important to free up abandoned handles
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023
Some Twitter users hoped that Musk’s plan would mean they could claim usernames that have been inactive for a long time, especially those that are short or desirable. However, Twitter’s policy still states that “we cannot release inactive usernames at this time.”
Musk hinted in a follow-up tweet that this rule might change in the future, saying that “it is important to free up abandoned handles.”
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