Netizens React After Twitter Purge

Users on popular social media platform Twitter earlier today experienced significant reduction in their follower counts after the platform performed a purge.

Users have also reported being locked out of their accounts and or being suspended. It is unclear whether the purge is related to Twitters earlier announcement to delete inactive accounts or an attempt to rid the platform off bots.

This week, twitter introduced new terms an conditions that if not followed would lead to account termination “Hello, To continue using Twitter, you’ll need to agree to the current Terms, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Use. This not only lets you make the best decisions about the information that you share with us, it also allows you to keep using your Twitter account. But first, you need to log in and follow the on-screen prompts before Dec. 11, 2019, otherwise your account will be removed from Twitter,” said Twitter.

Twitter had earlier announced that They would delete accounts which had been inactive for more than six months, Twitter then announced they had decided to halt the process due to customer feedback. Users wanted to be able to memorialize old accounts of friends, partners, family members, celebrities, and other influential Twitter users who’ve died.

However, Twitter Support clarified that they had an inactive account policy that needed to be implemented. “This impacts accounts in the EU only, for now. We’ve always had an inactive account policy but we haven’t enforced it consistently. We’re starting with the EU in part due to local privacy regulations (eg, GDPR).”

Here’s a couple of tweets of Netizens reacting to the purge;

Seems like Twitter is removing fake and inactive accounts. Good riddance, I don’t mind remaining with few active followers.

— Bel Akinyi (@BelAkinyii) December 3, 2019

Lost approx 100 followers in an hour. According to insights, these accounts are fully suspended or deleted by twitter. Is anyone else facing similar issues?

— Tanisha Gupta (@OfficeOfTanisha) December 3, 2019

Has anyone noticed the Twitter purge? I just lost +200 followers in a minute.

I had noticed that my following and engagement had been dropping and assumed it was because recent ranty stuff, but apparently, others are seeing similar.

Bots and dead accounts?

— Peter McCormack (@PeterMcCormack) December 3, 2019

That's how I lost 500+ followers to Twitter Purge. How much is Rope please? pic.twitter.com/x0BK1eNdrq

— British Son? (@british_son) December 3, 2019