On Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted a warning that each one inactive Twitter accounts would quickly be purged, probably impacting follower counts.
“We’re purging accounts which have had no exercise in any respect for a number of years, so you’ll in all probability see follower depend drop,” Musk tweeted.
Twitter’s official coverage now considers a consumer inactive in the event that they fail to log in “no less than each 30 days.” An archived model of this coverage exhibits that as lately as April 19, the coverage had been to log in each six months to maintain an account lively. Twitter appears to have quietly up to date the coverage inside the previous few weeks.
Twitter’s announcement comes days after Musk threatened to reassign NPR’s Twitter account if it stopped posting tweets. The risk got here after the information group introduced it was leaving Twitter.
Responding to Musk’s seeming stress to get NPR to rejoin Twitter, NPR reporter Bobby Allyn identified that Twitter could be violating its inactive account coverage if it reassigned the NPR account. Allyn famous that NPR would solely be topic to the coverage if it didn’t log in, not for failing to tweet, as Musk had steered could be violative.
“Musk didn’t reply when requested whether or not he deliberate to alter the platform’s definition of inactivity,” Allyn reported.
It is nonetheless unclear to many Twitter customers what the newest change to the inactive account coverage means.
Responding to Musk’s most up-to-date tweet, many Twitter customers requested if inactive accounts that had beforehand been suspended—like Donald Trump’s, which hasn’t tweeted since January 2021—could be purged or if Musk deliberate to be lenient on suspended accounts that have been solely lately welcomed again to the platform. Others puzzled what the coverage change may imply for accounts the place the consumer is deceased, together with fashionable Twitter feeds that memorialize celebrities.
Some dared to dream that Twitter’s resolution signifies that long-inactive coveted handles may quickly grow to be obtainable. Proper now, it doesn’t appear to be Twitter has any intention of letting customers declare inactive usernames, however Musk strikes quick, and that coverage may change any day. Twitter’s coverage nonetheless states that “we can’t launch inactive usernames at the moment.”
