Musk issues ultimatum to inactive Twitter users: Log in or be purged

On Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted a warning that all inactive Twitter accounts would soon be purged, potentially impacting follower counts.

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

Twitter's official policy now considers a user inactive if they fail to log in "at least every 30 days." An archived version of this policy shows that as recently as April 19, the policy had been to log in every six months to keep an account active. Twitter seems to have quietly updated the policy within the past few weeks.

Twitter's announcement comes days after Musk threatened to reassign NPR's Twitter account if it stopped posting tweets. The threat came after the news organization announced it was leaving Twitter.

Responding to Musk's seeming pressure to get NPR to rejoin Twitter, NPR reporter Bobby Allyn pointed out that Twitter would be violating its inactive account policy if it reassigned the NPR account. Allyn noted that NPR would only be subject to the policy if it failed to log in, not for failing to tweet, as Musk had suggested would be violative.

"Musk did not answer when asked whether he planned to change the platform's definition of inactivity," Allyn reported.

It's still unclear to many Twitter users what the most recent change to the inactive account policy means.

Responding to Musk's most recent tweet, many Twitter users asked if inactive accounts that had previously been suspended--like Donald Trump's, which hasn't tweeted since January 2021--would be purged or if Musk planned to be lenient on suspended accounts that were only recently welcomed back to the platform. Others wondered what the policy change might mean for accounts where the user is deceased, including popular Twitter feeds that memorialize celebrities.

Some dared to dream that Twitter's decision means that long-inactive coveted handles might soon become available. Right now, it does not seem like Twitter has any intention of letting users claim inactive usernames, but Musk moves fast, and that policy could change any day. Twitter's policy still states that "we cannot release inactive usernames at this time."