Twitter has been around for more than a decade, and many millions of accounts have been created.
But along the way, and after years pass, not all those accounts remain active. Some of those people may have created the accounts and neglected them afterward, or some may have used bots to automatically register new accounts. Things have become too crowded at Twitter.
Following the inactive policy Twitter has, billionaire Elon Musk who owns Twitter, announced that Twitter is removing accounts that have been inactive for several years.
He said that the action is "important to free up abandoned handles."
But knowing that the many users who have abandoned their Twitter accounts may have been deceased, Musk said that inactive accounts shall be archived.
As a result of this inactive accounts purge, Musk said that users of the microblogging platform could see a drop in their follower count.
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
According to Twitter's policy, users should log in to their account at least once every 30 days.
This is to ensure that they can avoid permanent removal due to prolonged inactivity.
Just before this, Musk "threatened" to reassign National Public Radio's Twitter account to another company, after the public broadcaster stopped posting content to its 52 official Twitter feeds in protest against a Twitter label that implied government involvement in its editorial content.
At that time, Musk, in an email to an NPR reporter, asked about its engagement with Twitter.
"So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?" NPR quoted Musk as saying.
"Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant," he said in another email. "Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR."
Read: Elon Musk Threatens To Reassign Twitter Account, Said U.S. National Public Radio
But it is important to free up abandoned handles
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023
After buying Twitter for $44 billion, he fired lots of employees, and applied extreme cost-cutting measures, in order to save money.
He also made numerous changes to how things work at Twitter.
He reinstated former U.S. President Donald Trump and also reinstated rapper Kanye West.
He also changed the feed's algorithms, and eliminated the blue checkmark from verified accounts that don't pay for Twitter Blue.
Musk has a history of announcing dramatic changes.
However, Musk is also known to have the tendencies to backtrack his decision when people he respects provide input.
After removing the legacy verified blue checkmark from the profiles of thousands of people, including celebrities, journalists and prominent politicians, Musk was met with huge criticisms and backlash. He revised this decision a bit,
After realizing that many of those who refused to pay were actually famous people, Musk decided to just return the blue checkmark to anyone with over 1 million followers.