According to Musk, Twitter’s purge is more conservative than that policy states. Instead, he says the company is purging accounts that have had “no activity at all for several years,” while also warning users that the result of the purge may mean users’ follower accounts drop. That’s something that may be more noticeable on longtime Twitter accounts whose owners accumulated a large following in Twitter’s early days as a social network. In a follow-up tweet, Musk also clarified in response to a question about username availability that “yes,” a lot of usernames were about to become available as a result of this move. He didn’t, however, clarify how users would be able to acquire these usernames beyond the usual method of trying to create a new account with a particular name. In recent months, Twitter had considered selling desired usernames through online auctions to generate additional revenue. It’s not clear if that plan still remains in play or how it will work, if so. In December 2022, Musk had also tweeted that Twitter would “soon” start freeing the namespace of 1.5 billion accounts, noting that inactive accounts would be deleted as part of that process. Musk has been interested in freeing up usernames for some time, having also tweeted in October it was something he was keen to do as Twitter’s new owner. Elon Musk says Twitter is purging old accounts, freeing up desired usernames by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
