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
One of the main concerns is the question of what exactly constitutes “several years” as the requirement to have an old Twitter account deactivated. There are several accounts on Twitter that haven’t been active in a long time, however, they include tweets that have been shared extensively and removing the account would most likely cause broken links.
But it is important to free up abandoned handles
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023
Twitter’s inactive account purge is part of a larger effort by the company to streamline its platform and reduce the number of bots. That said, the timing for this new policy is also consistent with a Twitter executive allegedly reaching out to NRP to reportedly “threaten” with reassigning its handle now that the news organization stopped posting less than a month ago.
It remains to be seen how this will play out and we will hopefully be getting more details soon. I imagine there are plenty of users that have been waiting on the opportunity to grab a better handle, and this may just be the best time to do that.
