"Fears Twitter cull of dormant accounts could lock out imprisoned activists", 9 May 2023

A planned cull of Twitter accounts that have been inactive for more than six months has raised concerns among human rights defenders, who fear the impact on imprisoned activists.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, said on Monday that dormant accounts would be deleted to help boost engagement.

Twitter said it was working to “clean up” inactive accounts to “present more accurate, credible information people can trust”.

The cull will include accounts that have become dormant due to the death of the user. Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not offer a “memorialisation” option.

Mona Seif, sister of prominent British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah, noted the changes could affect jailed activists like her brother.

“I hope that does not include accounts of political prisoners who have had no access to the internet for years, like my brother Alaa is in prison, this time around, since 2019 solely because of his writings. His account is crucial to maintain his voice and presence,” she tweeted.

Like many prominent activists during the 2011 “Arab Spring” pro-democracy uprisings, Abd el-Fatteh became prominent on social media. His tweets make up a core part of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a collection of his writing published in 2021 that includes texts smuggled out of prison on scraps of paper.

Deborah Brown, a senior tech researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the move could have a detrimental effect in countries where people are denied freedom of expression.

Deleting accounts would “add insult to injury for activists and human rights defenders, like Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who have long used social media to engage in public debate but whose accounts are currently inactive due to their imprisonment”.