Twitter on Tuesday announced a new policy saying owners of inactive accounts either need to sign in by December 11th, or their account will be deleted, and the username will be up for grabs. Any user that hasn’t signed in for more than six months should see the warning in their email. However, concerns were quickly raised over how the new policy would impact the accounts of deceased customers.
Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t offer a way to memorialize Twitter accounts belonging to users that have passed away. Loved ones have long had that option on other social networks, such as Facebook.
Twitter initially said it was working on a fix for the issue. “We do not currently have a way to memorialize a person’s Twitter account once they have passed on, but the team is thinking about ways to do this,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Verge.
However, in the face of backlash from concerned users, Twitter today announced that it won’t delete any accounts until “we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts.” The social network also stated the changes are only going to impact users in the EU to start.
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.
— Support (@Support) November 27, 2019
