According to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk, Twitter will remove accounts that have been inactive for years, and users on the social media network may witness a decline in follower count.

“We’re purging accounts that haven’t had any activity in several years, so your follower count will most likely drop,” Musk wrote in a tweet.

Twitter considers an account to be active if it has been logged into at least once in the last 30 days, according to its user guidelines.

“When people register for an account, we encourage them to actively log in and use Twitter.” Log in at least once every 30 days to keep your account active. Accounts may be permanently deleted if dormant for an extended period of time,” according to a note on the platform’s inactive account policy.
This is not the first time Musk has warned of mass account deletions. On December 9, 2017, he tweeted that the network would erase up to 1.5 billion dormant accounts.

“Twitter will soon start freeing up the space of 1.5 billion accounts,” Musk tweeted. He added to the discussion, “These are obvious account deletions with no tweets and no log-in for years.”
In addition to his concerns about dormant accounts, Musk has previously denounced Twitter bots.

In May of last year, he called off his $44 billion attempt to acquire Twitter, citing Twitter’s claim that less than 5% of accounts on the platform are bots.

The removal of bogus accounts and spam bots was a prominent element of Musk’s takeover proposal. He had stated in a tweet that he “will defeat the spam bots or die trying.”
Musk has included account verification as a feature of Twitter’s Blue membership in response to this issue.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com