As you might have heard, Twitter recently announced that they would begin purging inactive accounts next month. This would essentially delete accounts that have not been logged into for the past six months and will also free up a bunch of usernames. However, it seems that this announcement was not as well-received as Twitter had hoped.
So much so that Twitter has since followed up with additional clarifications about their plans. According to Twitter, first of all, the account purging will only apply to EU accounts for now due to local privacy regulations such as the GDPR. Twitter also notes that they’ve always had an inactive account policy, but they also admit that it’s not one that they enforce consistently.
There have also been some concerns by users about accounts belonging to deceased loved ones. According to Twitter, they have acknowledged this and will also putting the purge on hold while they figure out a way to allow users to memorialize accounts. This article by Drew Olanoff on TechCrunch shows how people still revisit the Twitter accounts of their deceased loved ones just to relive certain memories and thoughts that their loved one had.
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 memorialize accounts.
— Support (@Support) November 27, 2019
We’re not sure how Twitter plans on handling this, but in the meantime, perhaps consider logging into your account every six months or so if you’d like to keep it active.
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