Twitter is planning the biggest cull in its history, but users are unlikely to sense a great disturbance as millions of accounts are suddenly silenced. The company says only accounts that have been inactive for six months or longer will be deleted, the BBC reports. Twitter will start culling them in batches starting Dec. 11. To keep an account active, all users need to do is log in at least once before that date. Twitter says the move is to ensure that all users have agreed to its new privacy policies. The move will also remove inactive users from people's follower counts. Twitter says the cull is part of an ongoing effort to persuade users to "actively log in and use Twitter when they register an account, as stated in our inactive accounts policy."
User names from deleted accounts will become available as the inactive accounts are annihilated, though Twitter says they will be released gradually, which Fast Company predicts will happen over many months. Deceased users will not be treated differently from other inactive users, so their accounts will also be axed. "We do not currently have a way to memorialize someone’s Twitter account once they have passed on, but the team is thinking about ways to do this," a spokesperson tells the Verge. (More Twitter stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
