The latest chapter in Elon Musk’s determined Twitter experimentation sees the billionaire announce another controversial piece of housekeeping: the removal of billions of inactive accounts.
“We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” Musk announced in a tweet.
This move was met with derision by some, who worried about their follower counts dropping, but also others who wished for their dead loved one’s accounts to remain as memorials.
Others also questioned the wisdom of removing what is essentially a public, historic record.
Musk later clarified that “the accounts will be archived”, adding, “but it is important to free up abandoned handles.”
It’s unknown how many inactive accounts there are, but in December Musk tweeted he will “will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts.”
Given that a number of longtime users have become inactive of late, in protest of Musk’s removal of blue ticks and drive to charge subscription fees, this may also be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction by Musk against those loudly abandoning the social media platform.
