Twitter announced a new policy yesterday that planned to remove accounts that have been inactive for six months or more with the goal “to present more accurate, credible information people can trust across Twitter.” However, concerns were quickly raised about how the new policy would impact customers who have passed away.
Strangely enough, Twitter doesn’t have a way to memorialize the Twitter accounts of loved ones when competitors like Facebook have had that option for years.
As my colleague Ben Lovejoy wrote this morning, the new policy was set to include accounts of deceased users in the purging, seemingly as an oversight rather than intentionally.
Twitter announced yesterday that it would begin permanently deleting the accounts of those who haven’t tweeted for at least six months, but it admitted this would include the accounts of those who have passed away.
After noticing the backlash, Twitter owned the oversight in a tweet and said it won’t delete any accounts until “we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts.”
The company also clarified that these changes are only going to impact EU users to start.
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.
— Support (@Support) November 27, 2019
We apologize for the confusion and concerns we caused and will keep you posted.
— Support (@Support) November 27, 2019
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