Elon Musk said on Friday that Twitter would be removing 1.5 billion dormant accounts. On Friday, Elon Musk, Twitter’s newly appointed owner, said that the company would delete and make public the profiles of 1.5 billion inactive users.
The namespace of 1.5 billion Twitter accounts will be released soon. There have been no tweets or logins for years, so it’s clear these accounts have been deleted,” stated Musk.
Musk said the microblogging service is working on a way to notify users when their tweets have been “shadow banned” and give them the opportunity to appeal the decision.
He went on to claim that Twitter also creates apps that show your actual account status. The CEO of Twitter announced earlier in the day that, similar to videos, view counts would soon be visible next to tweets. Musk claims that the user activity on Twitter is significantly more than is commonly believed.
Musk released an upgrade for the microblogging service after the second episode of “Twitter Files” exposed the company’s use of blacklists and intentional suppression of some accounts.
In a tweet, he said, “so you know clearly whether you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why, and how to appeal,” all of which will be revealed in an upcoming software upgrade now in development by Twitter.
Journalist Bari Weiss, using internal business records, broke the story, claiming that Musk approved of the practise of “shadow banning” conservative critics’ tweets. Author Matt Taibbi and researcher Glenn Weiss have been publishing articles from “The Twitter Files” series, which is based on the aforementioned collection of papers.
Since Musk acquired Twitter, he has pledged to do what he can to promote open dialogue on the platform. On Thursday, Democratic Representative for California, Adam Schiff, blasted him for encouraging the spread of insults and other forms of hatred. Musk claims that since he bought the company, “hate speech impressions” have dropped by one-third.
