Twitter Rollbacks on Plan to Remove Inactive Accounts Amid User Concerns

The big news on Twitter this week was the announcement that the social network will be getting rid of inactive users. That meant you’d finally be able to get that username you have long been wanting.

Shortly after the announcement, though, there were a lot of concerns and questions about the process. The concern was mainly caused due to the vagueness of Twitter’s announcement, and the lack of clarity on how the entire process would actually work.

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Today, the company clarified somethings — but more importantly, announced that it will not be removing inactive accounts until some major concerns are addressed. And that is, of course, dealing with the accounts of the deceased.

Twitter wants to give users the ability to “memorialize” accounts of the deceased, instead of simply removing them for being “inactive”. The issue is quite tricky here, and it’s not exactly clear how Twitter plans to tackle it.

We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part. We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019

The company apologized for the confusion caused, too.

Twitter also clarified that the company originally planned to remove inactive accounts in the EU only. Due to local privacy regulations such as GDPR, the company said it would actually start enforcing its inactive account policy more consistently — but starting only with users in the EU. As for everyone else, the company says it will look into expanding the consistent enforcement of the inactive account policy throughout the world and communicate the changes to users, when and if they are made.