Twitter is putting off its plans to delete inactive accounts following concerns over what would happen to accounts of deceased users.
Yesterday, we reported Twitter would be removing accounts that have been inactive for over 6 months. This was scheduled to have taken place on December 11th.
Now, Twitter has decided not to remove inactive accounts until it creates a way for people to memorialize accounts of the deceased.
We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part. We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019
It’s unclear now what the timeline is for removing inactive accounts. Although we’ve now learned that when the day comes only accounts in the EU will be impacted.
Twitter says there has always been an inactive account policy in place, which was not consistently enforced. Due to privacy regulations such as GDPR, Twitter will begin enforcing its inactive account policy more consistently starting with the EU.
The company may broaden enforcement of this policy in the future to comply with other regulations around the world.