‘Twitter Purge 2023’ confirmed by Elon Musk

Twitter will be cancelling accounts that have been inactive for a prolonged period, says CEO Elon Musk.

Twitter app on a phone screen – illustrative photo. Image credit: Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash, free license

Elon Musk announced this news on Monday, explaining that he aims to increase engagement and revenue on the platform that he acquired for $44 billion last year, and this decision is important as the company seeks to “free up abandoned handles.”

Musk also wrote in his personal tweet that the platform will be purging accounts that have had no activity for several years, and this will likely lead to a drop in follower count throughout the remaining base of active users. The purged accounts will be archived.

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

The earlier decisions to implement changes at Twitter after acquiring this platform, such as drastically reducing staff and eliminating free verification check marks, have not been well-received by users and advertisers.

According to the industry experts, Twitter’s revenues have declined due to advertisers avoiding the platform – this trend started soon after the first social network policy changes that followed immediately after the change in its ownership.

The latest move was already critically met by many prominent figures, including John Carmack, founder of Id Software. He said that many historic tweets would be lost by pursuing this action.

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

In late April, Twitter reinstated blue ticks on some high-profile accounts, a move that was protested by many recipients. Musk clarified at the time that he was “personally paying for some subscriptions”.

This decision, however, remained strongly controversial, as some official media accounts, such as AFP, regained their blue tick sign. But others, such as the U.S. public radio NPR, suspended activity on their accounts in mid-April due to Twitter’s “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels that were assigned without the account users’ consent, which they protested against.

Twitter logo on a window. Image credit: Kevin Krejci via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Since Musk took over Twitter, the moderation of content on the platform has become more ‘relaxed‘, with less strict but increasingly automated supervision. This resulted in the return of many users who had been banned for inciting hatred or spreading misinformation.