Elon Musk threatens to reassign inactive Twitter accounts

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter will purge accounts that have been inactive on the social media platform for a long time.

The Twitter chief had already expressed interest last November in purging inactive accounts. He said in the following month that Twitter would “soon” start freeing the usernames of 1.5 billion accounts, adding that inactive accounts would be deleted in the process.

“We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” Mr Musk tweeted on Monday.

“It is important to free up abandoned handles,” the multibillionaire said.

Responding to a user, the Tesla and SpaceX chief said several usernames will become available as a result of the move.

Many users replied to Mr Musk’s tweet, asking if there will be a way to memorialise accounts of deceased users.

The multibillionaire hinted that deleted accounts “will be archived”.

The latest decision comes as Twitter continues to make new changes to the platform to boost revenue even as some of the measures have alienated users and advertisers.

Earlier last month, the company did away with free blue check marks, and monetised its user verification process, charging people $8 each month for the “blue tick” badges.

Mr Musk, however, proceeded to reinstate the blue tick on some celebrity, media and other high profile accounts even as some of the recepients protested receiving free verification.

Twitter has also tried several different approaches to boost revenue, including relaxing some of its policies that ban political advertisements and adding a more expensive ad-free subscription option to the platform.

The social media company also announced that it was planning to charge companies from $42,000 to as much as $210,000 per month for access to its Application Programming Interface.

Twitter has also changed its content policies, announcing it will rely more on artificial intelligence to moderate posts on the platform.

The platform is also trying to attract more content creators.

On Tuesday, the Tesla chief tweeted to his followers that their “support of content creators” on the platform is “very much appreciated”.

“We keep none of the subscription revenue for the first 12 months & only 10 per cent thereafter,” Mr Musk said.