Twitter is planning to erase accounts that haven’t logged in for the past six months from their database starting from December 11th.
Twitter’s current inactive account policy states that inactivity is based on logging in, not tweeting, so if you have logged into your account recently but haven’t tweeted since 2017, your account will be fine.
According to the policy, Twitter recommends logging into your account every six months or so to reduce the risk of your account getting deleted.
“As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we’re working to clean up inactive accounts to present more accurate, credible information people can trust across Twitter. Part of this effort is encouraging people to actively log in and use Twitter when they register an account, as stated in our Inactive Accounts Policy. We have begun proactive outreach to many accounts who have not logged into Twitter in over six months to inform them that their accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.”
And when asked how it would handle accounts owned by dead people, Twitter told The Verge it’s thinking of how to memorialize those tweets. Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t offer a memorialization option that freezes the account in place and disallows new interactions – a measure to prevent abuse.
Although, since inactivity is based on logging in and not posting, bot accounts such as those which automatically tweet news or alerts would also come under the cull if the account owners do not log-in before the December deadline.
