Twitter to memorialise accounts of deceased users

Following last month's announcement that all inactive accounts would be removed from Twitter as of Wednesday, December 11th, the social networking company made an about-face in response to outrage the accounts of deceased users would disappear in the process.

“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 memorialise accounts,” said Twitter.

Twitter clarified that this swathe of deletions would have only impacted upon accounts in the EU in compliance with GDPR and added that “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”.

No more details have been provided on how a Twitter account could be memorialised or what this might look like. Meanwhile, those in favour of deleting inactive accounts to free up hundreds of thousands of unused usernames will have to wait and see.