Elon Musk has revealed his plans for the future of twitter this week. He has outlined his plans to release encrypted messaging and a new call feature for the app. This is all in an effort to bring the platform more in line with current Meta platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. Musk mentioned that a version of the encrypted Direct Messages will be available from Wednesday but he has not yet mentioned whether calls will be encrypted.
Alongside these announcements he has also announced that he will be deactivating accounts that have been in active several years. Musk stated this was all in an important effort to free up ‘abandoned handles’. He did mention that inactive accounts would be archived but did not elaborate on when the process would begin.
At this point in time, it’s unclear how this may affect accounts of the deceased. They are still unsure about how they will manage accounts of the deceased that are not controlled by their estate. For example, the account of the singer Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011, is active so is therefore safe but the page of Jamal Kashoggi, a Saudi journalist assassinated in 2018, is at risk of being removed because the messages stopped the day he died.
This does not just include Celebrities, family and friends of deceased people who weren’t famous but had a twitter account will no longer be able to scroll through the posts of their loved ones.
Musk has faced a lot of backlash for this tweet as the majority of people disagree with the purging of old accounts but many people speculate this is a way to better target advertising to active accounts in an effort to reduce costs.
Let’s see what the future holds for the development of this platform