Twitter defers its plan to delete inactive accounts until they can memorialize accounts of the deceased

Yesterday we reported that Twitter is planning to delete the old inactive accounts to declutter the platform as well as reduce spam. As many outlets pointed out, the plan was solid except it didn’t consider the accounts of the deceased people. While the accounts aren’t active, they sure don’t need to be deleted to declutter the platform.

Twitter soon understood the problem and has now deferred the inactive account deletion plan which was set to commence on 12th December. Twitter support confirmed that the company is working on ways to memorialize the accounts of deceased and will only delete inactive accounts once that has been done.

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

Twitter noted that it also missed out on a key piece of information in the initial announcement. The reason for the deletion of inactive accounts was to comply with the latest GDPR policies and while Twitter always had a policy, they never enforced it on the users. However, the company has now decided not to go forward with the plan outside of the EU until they have a working solution to memorialize the accounts of the deceased.

Beyond complying with GDPR, we may broaden the enforcement of our inactivity policy in the future to comply with other regulations around the world and to ensure the integrity of the service. We will communicate with all of you if we do.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019

While the exact plan is still not confirmed, Twitter plans to enforce the inactive account policy in all the regions. This is done in an effort to comply with local privacy laws and Twitter aims to follow them.