Elon Musk Says Twitter Will Purge Inactive Accounts, Which Could Give You the Handle You’ve Always Wanted #GeekLeap

If you have not logged into your Twitter account in just a few years, you possibly can be liable to dropping your deal with. And should you’ve been ready for a deal with to unlock, you possibly can be in luck quickly. Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and a handful of different firms, stated in a tweet on Monday that the social media platform will start “purging” accounts that “have had no exercise in any respect for a number of years.”

Musk gave no timeline for when the change will happen, however warned that post-expulsion, individuals ought to count on their followers to drop. 

The discover comes after Musk stated in December that Twitter would begin “liberating the title area of 1.5 billion accounts,” clarifying that these can be “apparent account deletions with no tweets & no log in [sic] for years.”

Sadly, Musk did not make clear precisely what this may imply for accounts of the deceased or present an choice to memorialize these accounts. And if accounts are opened up for claiming, it might as soon as once more result in one other impersonation drawback for Twitter, one which continues to plague the positioning as blue examine marks are actually accessible for buy.

In a reply to Musk, John Carmack, founding father of ID Software program, cautioned towards deleting inactive accounts, saying that it will make sourcing historic tweets tougher. It might additionally imply that Twitter threads from years in the past can be fragmented with gaps of unavailable tweets. 

Twitter did not instantly reply to a request for remark. 

Elon Musk bought Twitter late final 12 months for $44 billion. Since then, the positioning has seen an 80% discount in work drive, leaving round 1,500 staff. Twitter has additionally had numerous controversies, from rises in hate speech, account impersonations, verification examine marks being taken away from legacy accounts and main publications and a really public spat with NPR. Musk instructed employees in March that Twitter’s worth is now $20 billion, lower than half of what he purchased it for. 

Within the wake of Twitter’s takeover, just a few alternate options have floated up hoping to draw disaffected customers, together with Bluesky Social, based by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Hive and Mastodon.