Just a day after Twitter announced that it would remove inactive accounts from its platform, the micro-blogging website today called off its plan after a backlash from users that pointed that it would also destroy dead people’s Twitter account and their tweet archives.
Twitter announced to remove inactive accounts starting December 11, but has not suspended the move until the company finds a way to memorialise Twitter accounts of deceased people.
Unlike Facebook, which allows friends and family to report a person as being dead and to create a special page for them for sharing memories about that person, the dead person’s timelines on Twitter are left unchanged.
Soon after announcing to remove the inactive accounts, a lot of people raised concerns of losing access to the accounts of people that are no longer alive. Twitter apologised for not having a policy in place and called it ‘miss on their part’ and said that it will keep posted on the same.
‘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 memorize accounts,’ Twitter tweeted from its support page.
We’ve heard your feedback about our effort to delete inactive accounts and want to respond and clarify. Here’s what’s happening:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019
The micro-blogging website described the account clean-up as an effort to give users accurate and credible information that people can rely on – such as providing users with only relevant tweets instead of having them browse through tweets from irrelevant accounts. Additionally, by removing the inactive accounts, Twitter’s wants to free up usernames as in many cases, lucrative usernames are being taken by accounts that have been inactive for years.
