Twitter CEO Elon Musk unceremoniously announced an “account cleanup” on the popular social network. Some internet users strongly protested the decision, but it also has a clear purpose.
Elon Musk briefly announced the titanic change on Twitter, which caused an avalanche of discussions under his post. We are talking about unused accounts on the platform that the CEO just wants to … delete. Internet users are very divided - some consider it a tragedy, while others see the sense in the movement of a billionaire.
Musk plans to purge Twitter - what’s the matter?
“We plan to clean up accounts that have not shown any activity for several years. It is likely that the number of your followers will decrease,” Elon Musk warned on his official profile, which is followed by almost 140 million people.
The offhand statement was the prelude to a heated discussion. One of the leading voices in it was John Carmack, a legend in the computer and video game industry. He pointed out that deleting old accounts would be almost tantamount to… burning down the Library of Alexandria.
“If you do plan on deleting inactive accounts and their tweet histories, I STRONGLY urge you to reverse this decision. It is important to tell users how many active followers they have. However, removing content from inactive accounts would be a tragedy. […] I still see people who liked my tweets from 10 years ago. The older the discussions, the more fragmented they are. Please don’t make things worse,” Carmack wrote.
It was followed by many people who consider the mass deletion of accounts and their records a tragic decision. This would be a big loss, especially for the accounts of people who have died or simply been inactive on the platform in recent years.
Musk responds to Internet users - it’s about usernames
After a period of great excitement and great uncertainty, Musk spoke again - this time even shorter. “Accounts will be archived. But it’s important to release abandoned usernames.”
It looks like Musk listened to the community and corrected the move, or he never had plans to actually remove the content. However, he has officially confirmed the purpose of the cleanup - to make available to new users a whole range of account names that have so far been “occupied” by people who no longer use Twitter.
However, there are still many unknowns. What does “inactive account” mean? The website states only 30 days. What is considered an activity? Login? Do you read tweets? Or just records? When will the purge be? We don’t know this either.
Source: Wprost
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