Twitter to purge inactive accounts, Musk warns follower count could drop

“We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” read Musk’s tweet.

According to its user guidelines, Twitter considers an account to be active if it was logged into at least once in 30 days.

“We encourage people to actively log in and use Twitter when they register an account. To keep your account active, be sure to log in at least every 30 days. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity,” reads a note on the platform’s inactive account policy.

This is not the first time Musk has warned of mass deletion of accounts. On December 9 last year, he tweeted saying the platform would delete as many as 1.5 billion inactive accounts.

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“Twitter will soon start freeing the space of 1.5 billion accounts,” Musk had tweeted. These are obvious account deletions with no tweets & no log in for years, he added to the thread.

In addition to his concern about inactive accounts, Musk has, in the past, criticised bots on Twitter.

Last year in May, he halted his $44-billion bid to acquire Twitter citing Twitter’s assertion that less than 5% of accounts on the platform are bots.

Musk made weeding out fake accounts and spam bots the central theme of his takeover bid. In a tweet, he had said he “will defeat the spam bots or die trying”.

In response to this issue, Musk has integrated account verification as a feature of Twitter’s Blue subscription.