• Elon Musk has tweeted out that inactive accounts that have not been used for several years, will soon be removed from the platform.
• No timeline has been outlined for this proposed plan.
• It is unclear how the accounts of deceased individuals that family members may want to keep active will be affected.

Elon Musk announced an impending change for Twitter via his personal account instead of an official statement again, this time tweeting out regarding inactive accounts.

More specifically the chief twit says the platform will soon be, “purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop.”

While we understand the move from Musk, given his penchant for ensuring follower counts on the platform are as accurate as possible, targeting inactive accounts may present more of a challenge than he realises.

As much as we loathe to cite him, the divisive Andrew Tate raises an interesting point, replying to Musk’s tweet that he still checks in on the account of his deceased father. This is an issue that Twitter has tried, and failed, to tackle, since before Musk took over, and now it looks like it will be an issue once again, depending on how the chief twit chooses to handle the process.

When it comes to the account of a deceased family member, Twitter has methods in place to close said account, with the estate contacting the platform to get this done. There is no mention, however, of how to keep said account active for a person long deceased.

We have also seen during the recent check mark verification debacle that deceased celebrities have been given blue ticks, whether they asked for them or not.

As such, the platform still has a lot of work to do when it comes to handling accounts posthumously, or indeed inactive accounts for which there is a legitimate reason for a lack of activity.

At the time of writing, Musk has not posited a solution to the request posed by Tate, but he may soon have to, lest another backlash happen to Twitter over handling its user accounts poorly.

[Image – Photo by Christophe Maertens on Unsplash]