The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- John Furner
Twitter CEO Elon Musk warned users Monday that they may see their follower count drop due to a purge of dormant accounts.
“We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” the tweet read.
Several users said that deleting accounts that were dormant to simply free up handles is too extreme. Software designer John Carmack chimed in to suggest a less destructive policy.
I may be reading this incorrectly, but if you are actually deleting inactive accounts and all their historic tweets, I would STRONGLY urge you to reconsider.
Letting people know how many “active” followers they have is good information, but deleting the output of inactive…
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) May 8, 2023
Mr. Musk agreed and replied, “The accounts will be archived.” He didn’t say whether this means all of the deactivated accounts will be archived.
This lack of detail doesn’t bring much comfort to those concerned about losing access to tweets from deceased friends and relatives.
Conservative influencer Andrew Tate said he still reads tweets from his dead father and asked the CEO to keep his account active. In response, some users suggested the ability to create memorial accounts
