Elon Musk says Twitter beginning to purge inactive accounts

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Twitter is in the process of removing old accounts that have sat idle for multiple years, owner Elon Musk said Monday.

"We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop," he tweeted.

The criteria for determining the removal of an account was not immediately clear. Former President Donald Trump, for example, has not tweeted since Musk ordered his account reinstated in November along with dozens of others previously banned from the social media website.

Trump has not tweeted since January 2021, and has not conducted any public activity on his @realDonaldTrump account since his account was reactivated. Trump has sought to interact with the public online via his proprietary social media platform, Truth Social.

Twitter's internal inactive account policy says users should log in at least once every 30 days, but it is unclear if that is the policy the company will use to establish whether an account will be removed.

Musk's decision to purge inactive accounts come as his helming of Twitter enters its seventh tumultuous month after he acquired the company for $44 billion in October. In the time since, Musk has slashed the company's staff, removed Twitter's previous verification system and replaced it with a paid subscription service, and removed legacy verification badges from thousands of accounts, many of whom have declined to sign up for the paid Twitter Blue service.