Twitter has announced that it will place on hold plans to disable inactive accounts following user backlash, a day after making the announcement.
According to social networking company Twitter, it will place the plan on hold and would not remove the inactive accounts until it had a process for "memorializing" dead users on the network. It also made the admission that it was a "miss on our part" not having a particular policy in place.
Twitter has argued that its decision to take action on inactive accounts was due to regulatory concerns. Once a full process was in place, it will start deactivating inactive accounts in the European Union in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
On Monday, Twitter started informing users who had not logged in in the past six months that they would have their accounts deleted unless they signed in and agreed to its latest privacy policy.
The firm admitted that it had not considered the potential uproar that would be caused by the deletion of accounts belonging to users who had died.
Drew Olanoff, a communications officer at investment firm Scaleworks, said his "heart sank" when he learned of Twitter's plans because he often checked in on his father's account, several years after his death.
Olanoff wrote: "It’s my way, odd or not, of remembering him. Keeping his spirit alive. His tweets are timestamped moments that he shared with the world. And Twitter is sweeping them up like crumpled-up paper and junk in a dustbin.”
Unlike Twitter, other social networks, such as Facebook, offer a process called "memorialization" which allows verified family members or other loved ones to request deceased user's account to remain on the network but frozen in time.
However, in order to help prevent trolling and other abuse, interactions with the account are limited. Twitter has vowed to create a similar tool.
