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Twitter suspends dormant account cull amid backlash

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By John Glenday, Reporter

November 28, 2019 | 2 min read

Twitter has bowed to public pressure by announcing that it has pressed ‘pause’ on a controversial clean-up operation designed to clear out inactive legacy accounts.

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Twitter suspends dormant account cull amid backlash

Active users had been angered at the deletion of such dormant accounts prompting the social network to change tack and pursue a mechanism for ‘memorialising’ deceased members to keep their memories alive.

Twitter has been pushed to deal with huge volumes of dormant and inactive accounts as a consequence of tighter General Data Protection Regulation which places the onus of responsibility on Twitter to manage archive content.

Initially, Twitter had warned that it would delete all users who hadn’t logged in over the past six months for its sweep and threatening to remove anyone who didn’t agree to its latest privacy policy but neglected to consider the impact on those unable to do so.

Confirming its change of heart Twitter wrote: “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.”

The oversight contrasts with rival networks such as Facebook which already offer a memorialisation service for families wishing to maintain limited access to the frozen accounts of loved ones.

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