Elon Musk says Twitter will start purging inactive accounts and follower counts will drop
Twitter has announced that it will soon begin purging inactive accounts on the platform. This move is part of Twitter's efforts to free up usernames that have been taken up by inactive accounts.
The announcement was made by Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, via a tweet yesterday while also confirming that this action may cause a dip in follower count. However, the decision is sparking a conversation on whether this is a good idea or not.
One of the main concerns is the question of what exactly constitutes "several years" as the requirement to have an old Twitter account deactivated. There are several accounts on Twitter that haven't been active in a long time, however, they include tweets that have been shared extensively and removing the account would most likely cause broken links.
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
Although having an accurate count of how many real users follow you is important, some are concerned that this move will undoubtedly start a "land grab" for old and desirable usernames, such as those that are shorter in length or represent real names.
When challenged on the above issues, Musk responded by assuring that old accounts will indeed be archived, preserving old tweets. This solves one of the issues raised but there are still many details about this new policy that have not been shared yet or made public on Twitter's inactive account policy help page.
But it is important to free up abandoned handles
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023
Twitter's inactive account purge is part of a larger effort by the company to streamline its platform and reduce the number of bots. That said, the timing for this new policy is also consistent with a Twitter executive allegedly reaching out to NRP to reportedly "threaten" with reassigning its handle now that the news organization stopped posting less than a month ago.
It remains to be seen how this will play out and we will hopefully be getting more details soon. I imagine there are plenty of users that have been waiting on the opportunity to grab a better handle, and this may just be the best time to do that.
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