The social media site, Twitter, has announced it will be deleting the accounts of users that have been inactive for 6 months or more. The mass cull will even include the accounts of users that have died.
Twitter says that the need for the move reflects on its terms and conditions of usage in that those not active on the site for this time period are not adhering to usage rules.
Shutting down of the accounts will begin on December 11th, unless people log in before that date. Those outside the US will be the first to be targeted.
Why do it?
“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,” said the firm.
It adds, “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.”
Despite users saying that Twitter is doing this to free up user names, the company says this is not the case. However, after the accounts are deleted, these user names will be free to use.
How to stop it
A user must have logged in at least once in the last 6 months for their account to be seen as active.
Emails have been sent to those thought to be affected by the cull and as the deadline becomes closer, more warnings will be sent. Twitter has not said how many accounts may be disturbed.
Twitter in other news
The site also came under fire earlier this week when it and Facebook both announced the data of “hundreds of users” had potentially been exposed.
In a blog post, Twitter said the “issue is not due to a vulnerability in Twitter’s software, but rather the lack of isolation between SDKs [software development kits] within an application.”
Those thought to have been affected by the leak are have been notified.
