Tech billionaire Elon Musk whose recent policies and decision on his recently acquired social media platform Twitter, has been met with a negative reaction, has caused another stir with the recent announcement to remove Twitter accounts that have been left dormant for “several years”.
Elon Musk tweeted on his Twitter account about some new features that would be implemented on the social media platform earlier this week. He announced that “inactive Twitter accounts” would be removed to free up “abandoned handles”. This move has since sparked several emotions, most especially from users with deceased family members who still have their accounts on Twitter.
Esther Haddad, who lost her 26-year-old daughter six years ago expressed her displeasure with the move saying “I mean they could have at least sent a warning, but not just boom, remove them,”.
Elon Musk Receives Backlash From Grieving Families Over New Twitter Policy
Haddad said “When you lose someone, the tiniest memory is comforting, the tiniest, so when they deleted her account on Twitter, it crushed me.”
Elon Musk Receives Backlash From Grieving Families Over New Twitter Policy
Another Twitter user, Emily Reed, shared how she felt about the policy change “says a lot about Musk’s lack of empathy and tendency towards doing things without noticing or caring about the consequences.”
Emily Reed had lost her sister 10 years ago and usually read through her sister’s timeline “just to feel close to her personality and zest for life.”
Reed tweeted “Fuck you @elonmusk, your nonsense has taken away a monument to my sister’s mark on this earth,”.
According to Twitter’s inactive-account policy, users must log in at least every 30 days to remain active. However, according to the Internet Archive, last month, the policy said users were only required to log in every six months.
Twitter has seen several changes made to its policies but has not found a solution on how to memorialize its dead for years.
In 2020, a similar move was made by the social media platform to remove inactive users’ accounts completely but this sparked a series of backlash from relatives of deceased users and it promised to find a way to memorialize the accounts.
Elon Musk, however, in a tweet on Monday promised that the accounts will be “archived” but both Reed and Haddad disclosed that they have not been given any information regarding the archive. They also wished that Twitter would implement a similar policy used by Facebook, in which the accounts of the deceased are memorialized so that their content remains on the site for others who knew them to go back to it and add posts.
Reed added that “I would hope Twitter could put together a legacy or memorial program, much like Facebook has done,”
While Haddad said, “At the very least, they should give the option to download the data before they delete.”
