Twitter Moves to Purge Out Dormant Accounts

Posted by African Examiner Business News, Featured, Latest Headlines, World News Wednesday, November 27th, 2019

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Twitter is set to begin massive purging of accounts that have been inactive for over six months.

The social media platform said the affected accounts will be spared, provided the owners log in before Wednesday, December 11 deadlines.

The ‘’cull’’ Twitter disclosed will include users who have stopped posting to the site because they died – unless someone with that person’s account details is able to log-in.

Since its advent, this is the first time Twitter is removing inactive accounts on such a large scale.

The site said it was because users who do not log-in were unable to agree to its updated privacy policies.

A spokeswoman said it would improve credibility by removing dormant accounts from people’s follower counts, something which may give a user an undue sense of importance. The first batch of deleted accounts will involve those registered outside of the US.

The firm linked inactivity on whether or not a person has logged in at least once in the past six months. Twitter said the effort is not, as had been suggested by some users on the network, an attempt to free up usernames.

In future, the firm said it would also look at accounts where people have logged in but don’t “do anything” on the platform.

A spokeswoman indicated that the firm uses many signals to determine genuine human users – not just whether they interact with, or post, tweets.