Elon Musk Announces Plan to Purge Inactive Twitter Accounts

TED

Twitter is alerting users that they may see a change in their accounts as the company takes care of some much-needed housekeeping.

Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform, tweeted Monday that the company will begin purging inactive accounts that may result in some current users seeing a drop in their follower count.

“We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” Musk tweeted.

TechCrunch said that the drop in followers is “something that may be more noticeable on longtime Twitter accounts whose owners accumulated a large following during Twitter’s early days as a social network.”

Twitter has been promising to free-up usernames for years, according to TechCrunch, but this would be the first major effort to fulfill that promise if Musk follows through. The company played with the idea of selling usernames through online auctions, but nothing has come of that so far.

Twitter does have an “inactive account policy” that instructs users to log in at least every 30 days in order to keep their accounts active. “Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity,” the policy says.

In response to Musk’s tweets, many users have asked what will happen to accounts of people who have died. Some even said they want to “memorialize” the accounts. Musk hasn’t responded to these requests yet.

In April, Twitter announced that it was ending its “Verified” program that took blue checkmarks away from Twitter users, including celebrities and politicians. Those who still wanted checkmarks would have to subscribe to “Twitter Blue” for $8 a month.

Data shows that the number of users increased by about 12 million since Musk took the helm in Oct. 2022, bringing the total users to around 400 million.