Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company is planning to erase 1.5 billion inactive accounts in order to free up idle handles, or user names, on the network.
Musk stated that the deletions will free up “name space” of inactive accounts, adding that the accounts to be removed were “obvious” due to “no tweets” and “no log in for years.”
Some Twitter users have complained that dormant accounts have uncommon and appealing usernames that were captured in the early days of Twitter.
Twitter reported 237.8 million “monetizable daily active users” in the second quarter of 2022, indicating that they are engaged on the network and are being served adverts.
Musk previously vowed to delete dormant Twitter accounts. He said in November that accounts that had been dormant for 15 years will be removed.
It’s unknown how long an account may be dormant before being marked for deletion. Musk hinted in October that accounts that had been dormant for more than a year might also be at risk.
Twitter representatives did not immediately react to Insider’s request for comment, which was made after usual business hours.
Twitter usage appears to have increased in the weeks after Musk’s takeover: the first weekend of November saw Twitter’s highest daily active users ever, according to statistics obtained by Insider from Apptopia.
