Twitter CEO Elon Musk has announced that the social media platform will be “purging” accounts that have been inactive for several years. If you haven’t logged into your Twitter account in a while, you could be at risk of losing your handle. On the other hand, if you’ve been waiting for a specific handle to become available, you might be in luck soon.

Follower Count may drop sharply after the Twitter Account Purge

Musk did not provide a timeline for when the account deletions would take place, but he did caution that people should expect their follower count to drop after the purge.

This announcement follows Musk’s previous statement in December 2022 that Twitter would start “freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts,” which he clarified would include obvious account deletions with no tweets or logins for years.

However, Musk did not provide any clarification regarding what will happen to accounts belonging to deceased individuals or offer a way to memorialize those accounts. Additionally, if inactive accounts are opened up for claiming, this could lead to another impersonation problem for Twitter, which has already been plagued by the issue, as blue checkmarks are now available for purchase.

John Carmack, the founder of ID Software, replied to Musk’s tweet, warning that deleting inactive accounts could make it more challenging to source historic tweets. This could result in Twitter threads from years ago being fragmented with gaps of unavailable tweets.

Twitter has not yet responded to a request for comment on the matter.

It’s worth noting that Musk purchased Twitter in late 2022 for $44 billion, and since then, the platform has undergone significant changes. The site has seen an 80% reduction in its workforce, leaving around 1,500 employees. Twitter has also been embroiled in numerous controversies, including a rise in hate speech, account impersonations, and verification checkmarks being taken away from legacy accounts and major publications. Very recently, a bug allowed private tweets from Twitter Circle to be visible outside the Circle itself.

In light of Twitter’s takeover by Musk, several alternative social media platforms have emerged, hoping to attract disaffected users. These include Bluesky Social, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Hive etc.

It remains to be seen what impact this account purge will have on Twitter and its users. While it may help to free up usernames and prevent account squatting, it could also result in the loss of valuable historical tweets and cause further impersonation issues.

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