Twitter Has Realized That Sometimes, People Die →

Chris Welch, The Verge:

Twitter has followed up with more details surrounding its plan to remove inactive accounts over the coming months. First, the company says the process “impacts accounts in the EU only, for now.” That important tidbit wasn’t made clear when the news broke on November 26th. But far more important is that Twitter has recognized that it can’t go around deleting accounts until it finds a way to preserve the accounts of people who’ve died.

“We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part,” the company tweeted today. “We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorize accounts.” Emails sent by Twitter on Tuesday warned that any account that’s gone inactive for more than six months could be subject to removal if customers fail to log in by December 11th. Now, presumably that deadline will shift.

Sadly, I’m not even a little surprised this wasn’t thought of by whoever was in charge of it. Twitter leadership continues to prove it’s unable to really understand how people use their service, and how it should evolve.