Twitter halts plan to remove inactive accounts

MANILA, Philippines — Social media company Twitter has postponed its plan to remove inactive accounts pending the rollout of a system that would memorialize accounts of those already deceased.

The company apologized yesterday for creating confusion after it announced that it would deactivate inactive accounts as a way to free up usernames in the social media platform.

“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,” the company tweeted.

It also clarified that the plan was originally intended to impact those in the European Union, noting the existing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the region.

“We’ve always had an inactive account policy but we haven’t enforced it consistently. We’re starting with the EU in part due to local privacy regulations,” it added.

“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,” said the social media company.