Elon Musk threatens to dump inactive Twitter accounts
Social media platform Twitter will remove accounts that have been inactive for several years, CEO Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Monday.
The Twitter chief said on Monday that the action was “important to free up abandoned handles”.
“We’re purging accounts that haven’t been active at all for several years, so you’ll probably see a drop in followers,” Musk tweeted.
“It’s important to free up abandoned handles,” the multi-billionaire said.
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
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In a separate tweet, said inactive accounts will be archived, but Musk did not add any details on when the process will begin.
It was not immediately known if or how Twitter users could access archived accounts.
In a separate tweet on the micro-blogging platform, Musk said that people could see a drop in follower count as several inactive accounts might get removed.
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
In recent months, Twitter has considered selling desired usernames through online auctions to generate additional revenue.
It’s not clear if this plan is still in play, or how it would work if it were.
Also read: Elon Musk restores legacy Twitter Blue tick after online chaos
In December 2022, Musk also tweeted that Twitter would “soon” begin freeing up the namespace of 1.5 billion accounts, noting that inactive accounts would be deleted as part of the process.
Twitter last month removed the old verified blue tick from the profiles of thousands of people, including celebrities, journalists and prominent politicians.
Musk made account verification part of Twitter’s Blue subscription, a move he said would address the problem of bot accounts on the social media platform.
Twitter had set a fee of $1,000 (Sh132,520) per month for Kenyan companies, ministries and other government agencies that wanted a gold checkmark to verify their account, and Sh6,626 ($50) per month for associated accounts, including CEOs, directors, employees and subsidiaries.
The removal confused most businesses worldwide that were unaware of the changes. After a few days, Twitter reinstated verification for some governments and companies that could have spent millions of shillings a month to verify all their Twitter accounts.
Also read: Badge subscription: Riggy G’s Twitter grey verification restored