Twitter Plans to Delete Dead People's Accounts, Prompting Outrage

"My father’s Twitter account isn’t active. He passed away over four years ago."

Thanos Snap

Twitter is set to begin spring cleaning accounts that have been inactive for longer than six months. Users will have until December 11th to log in at least once to save their accounts from being wiped.

It's a controversial move, especially since the cull will include users who have passed away, the BBC reports.

Over My Dead Body

Twitter sent out emails to the holders of the inactive accounts to warn them of the cull, prompting outrage.

"My father’s Twitter account isn’t active," Drew Olanoff wrote in a piece for TechCrunch. "He passed away over four years ago."

"Once in a while he’d chime in with a zinger of a tweet and I’d share it humbly with the folks who kindly follow me," Olanoff added. "I still read his tweets, and from time to time I still share them with you."

Improving Credibility

A Twitter spokeswoman told the BBC that the cull would improve credibility by deleting inactive accounts from other users' follower counts — a metric that can mislead people into thinking some users have more clout than they actually do.

The user names of the deleted accounts will become available again after the December 11 deadline.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook offers a "memoralization" option that freezes accounts of people who have passed away and locks any interactions to prevent abuse.

READ MORE: Twitter prepares for huge cull of inactive users [BBC]

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