On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it would soon be launching a purge of inactive users to free up choice usernames for others, potentially allowing users to claim sweet handles like @badguy, @vomit, @logoff, or @gillbates. Just one problem: Twitter forgot that some of those accounts may belong to people who are dead.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Twitter Support acknowledged that this “was a miss on our part.” The company said that great inactive account purge would not be moving forward until they had created a feature to memorialise those users that have gone to that big posters’ paradise in the sky.
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.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019
We apologize for the confusion and concerns we caused and will keep you posted.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019
Unlike competitor Facebook, Twitter currently has no way to memorialise an account belonging to a user who has died (on its website, the only option offered for an account belonging to the deceased or incapacitated is a process for an authorised family member or estate representative to request it be deactivated). So this seems more of an opportunity to introduce a new feature than a genuine screwup: You can now have your posts live on forever.
After it sets up the memorialization feature, Twitter added, the purge will start with inactive accounts in European Union as part of an effort to comply with its sweeping General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy laws. It’s not clear when will begin purging names from elsewhere, such as the states.