Twitter CEO Elon Musk warned on Monday local time that the platform will soon clear those zombie accounts, which may affect the overall number of Twitter fans.
Elon Musk tweeted: “We are purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you may see a drop in followers.”
Twitter’s official policy currently considers an inactive user to be an inactive user if they do not log into their account “every 30 days.” But as of April 19th, users only need to log in every 6 months to keep their accounts active. It appears that Twitter has quietly updated this policy over the past few weeks.
National Public Radio (NPR) announced earlier that it would withdraw from the Twitter platform. Elon Musk then threatened to reassign NPR’s Twitter account if he stopped tweeting.
In response to Elon Musk’s request that NPR rejoins Twitter, NPR reporters argued that Twitter would be violating its policy on inactive accounts if NPR’s account was reassigned. The NPR reporter said that NPR would only be bound by this policy if the login failed, and Elon Musk’s statement violated the regulations.
Elon Musk didn’t answer when asked if he planned to change the platform’s definition of ‘inactive,'” the NPR reporter said.
Many Twitter users are still unclear about what the platform’s recent changes to its inactive account policy mean.
In response to Elon Musk’s recent tweets, many Twitter users are asking whether, for example, former US President Trump’s previously suspended account, which has not tweeted since January 2021, will also be purged; whether Elon Musk will be lenient with accounts that have been suspended and have only recently returned to the platform. Others wondered what the policy change would mean for accounts used to honor deceased celebrities.
Others have wondered whether Twitter’s decision means that some long-inactive account usernames may soon appear. At present, Twitter does not seem to have any idea of making other users apply for inactive usernames. Its policy still states: “We cannot post inactive usernames at this time.” But Elon Musk moved quickly, and this policy may change at any time.
