Musk tells users to brace for drop in follower count as Twitter begins purging accounts

Twitter CEO Elon Musk told users of the platform to brace themselves for a drop in their follower count as the social media company carries out the "purging" of accounts that are no longer in use. "We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop," he tweeted on Monday.

The move is part of Musk's vision to eliminate bots from Twitter and turn it as authentic as possible. His tweet garnered numerous responses, including one from a user who pointed out that deleting inactive accounts might not be a wise decision. "If you are actually deleting inactive accounts and all their historic tweets, I would STRONGLY urge you to reconsider. Letting people know how many “active” followers they have is good information, but deleting the output of inactive accounts would be terrible," the user said. 

"I still see people liking ten year old tweets I made, but the threads are already often fragmented with deleted or unavailable tweets," theey added, urging Musk to not "make it worse". Clarifying this, the Twitter boss said that the accounts will be archived instead, as this will allow active users to take up usernames. "The accounts will be archived. But it is important to free up abandoned handles," he said. 

We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023

Musk's Twitter carries out purges, scuffles with NPR 

This isn't the first time that Musk has launched a crackdown on bots and dead accounts since his takeover of the company last October. Earlier in December, he warned users that they might lose some followers as the platform "is purging a lot of spam and scam accounts right now".

Meanwhile, Musk continued his salvo against media outlets last week by threatening to reassign the American nonprofit National Public Radio's handle to “another company". The tussle began last month when NPR stopped tweeting after the platform categorised its account as state-affiliated media .