Old Twitter Accounts May Soon Be Deleted

In short, there are a number of situations where the original user of a social media service might temporarily or permanently pause activity on their page, but their account might still hold value. As an example, look at memorial pages. Facebook pioneered the idea of turning profile pages into memorials when users pass away. Despite a few bumps along the way, the memorial page concept has proven popular and is still widely used on the service. All that’s required is a designated legacy contact who can initiate turning a profile into a memorial and work with Facebook on any future issues. That person is given a few basic editing rights, but otherwise, the page largely remains static. 

Of course, a sweeping deletion of inactive Twitter accounts would also affect the accounts of people who have died. Many social media users would object to that, viewing memorial pages as valuable parts of their digital experience in spite of their superficial lack of activity. Twitter previously gestured at launching some variety of memorial pages for its own users (via NPR). That said, it’s been two years and that feature is still missing. At present, the only option Twitter offers loved ones for a deceased or incapacitated person’s account is to deactivate it. For users concerned that inactive but valuable accounts might vanish, reopening discussion on the memorial page paradigm might offer a starting point to preserve accounts they care about. For everyone else, you may want to start using your old Twitter account again if you don’t want to lose it.