Elon Musk has announced a purge of inactive accounts, saying that unused Twitter handles will be made available for reuse. As is generally the case, the details are as yet unknown (including to Musk, probably) …
Musk tweeted yesterday:
We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop
Questions were immediately asked. Tech entrepreneur John Carmack wanted to know whether that meant that historic tweets would be lost.
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 accounts would be terrible. I still see people liking ten year old tweets I made, but the threads are already often fragmented with deleted or unavailable tweets. Don’t make it worse!
Some may scoff at any allusion between Twitter and ancient libraries, but while the burning of the library of Alexandria was a tragedy, scrolls and books that were tossed in the trash just because nobody wanted to keep them are kind of worse.
Save it all!
Particular concerns were raised about the accounts and tweets of deceased people.
Musk replied that “accounts will be archived” but gave no detail. He said that “it is important to free up abandoned handles.”
Users suggested prefixing unused handles with something like “inactive_” in order to preserve their tweets while releasing the original Twitter handle.
Some cynics have suggested that the latest policy-on-the-fly announcement was made as part of Musk’s attempts to force organizations like NPR, PBS, and CBC to resume posting. Musk does reference “years” of inactivity here, but one thing he’s taught us is that his decisions can be modified or reversed on a whim.
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