Twitter Suspends Deletion Of Inactive Accounts

Shortly after Twitter started to delete accounts that were no longer active, there was criticism from the users. In this way, the tweets of the deceased would disappear. The company suspended the practice for the time being.

Twitter wants to continue the plans to delete and release inactive accounts only if there is a way to put profiles of deceased users in a state of remembrance. The company withdrew after just one day due to user protests and apologized.

At the same time, on November 27, 2019, the short message service made it clear that the cleanup should initially apply only to users in the European Union and referred to the General Data Protection Regulation as justification.

According to the GDPR, data may only be processed with the consent of the users and they must agree again in case of changes. Twitter has now taken this as an opportunity to request approval for updated terms of use.

Users must log in to Twitter to avoid deletion

Previously, first users who had not used their accounts for more than six months had been getting emails from Twitter. In it, they were invited to log in until 11 December 2019 with their profile data. Otherwise, their account names would become available to others again. The announcement quickly triggered criticism because it would also affect profiles of deceased users. Their tweets would then disappear.

For other social networks, such as Facebook, it is possible to convert an account after the owner dies. On this memorial page, the contributions of the deceased person remain, survivors can use them to remember the deceased. Twitter is missing such a possibility so far, which caused displeasure in the case of the now announced account deletions.