Losing Twitter followers? Elon Musk explains why

Long gone are the days of data-free Twitter, blue tick applications and cramming your message into a few dozen characters — and now your follower count may also take a hit.

Twitter boss Elon Musk announced this week that the social media platform is “purging” accounts that have been gathering dust.

“We're purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop,” he said.

His announcement drew sharp reaction, with some saying they still visit the accounts of loved ones who may have passed on or react to old comments that were made on inactive accounts.

Celebrated developer and tech guru John Carmack called on Musk to reconsider deleting old tweets.

“Letting people know how many 'active' followers they have is good information, but deleting the output of inactive accounts would be terrible. I still see people liking 10-year-old tweets I made, but the threads are already often fragmented with deleted or unavailable tweets.

“Don’t make it worse! Some may scoff at any allusion between Twitter and ancient libraries, but while the burning of the library of Alexandria was a tragedy, scrolls and books that were tossed in the trash just because nobody wanted to keep them are kind of worse. Save it all!”

Musk responded, saying these accounts would be archived, “but it's important to free up abandoned handles”.