Twitter, in order to free up usernames, has decided to deactivate inactive accounts. It will be sending warning emails to owners of accounts that have not been logged into for the past six months.
The Company initially announced that it will start removing the inactive accounts by 11th December 2019, however, later on, apologized for the confusion and has announced to halt the process for now.
Twitter’s Spokesperson, in an email to The Verge, wrote:
As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we’re working to clean up inactive accounts to present more accurate, credible information people can trust across Twitter. Part of this effort is encouraging people to actively log-in and use Twitter when they register an account, as stated in our inactive accounts policy.
We have begun proactive outreach to many accounts who have not logged into Twitter in over six months to inform them that their accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.
However, in a statement later on the Company clarified that the process “impacts accounts in the EU only, for now”. This little detail was left out in the first announcement. The Social media platform, later on, tweeted:
We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part. We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorize accounts.
Clarifying all the confusion we caused 👇🏽 https://t.co/NirJTl7QEM
— jack (@jack) November 27, 2019
Currently, only Facebook offers a way for accounts to be memorialized after the owner has deceased. According to The Verge, Twitter is also working on launching a similar feature. Twitter came to this conclusion after users raised concerns that old accounts of celebrities, friends, partners, family members, etc. who have deceased will be lost.
In the end, the company said:
We may broaden the enforcement of our inactivity policy in the future to comply with other regulations around the world and to ensure the integrity of the service. We will communicate with all of you if we do. We apologize for the confusion and concerns we caused and will keep you posted.
