Elon Musk to remove 1.5 billion Twitter accounts, announces new feature for users' tweets
Musk said users will soon be able to see how many people are viewing their tweets, 'just like videos'
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Elon Musk will be removing 1.5 billions users from Twitter in the coming weeks as well as adding a new feature, he said in a series of overnight tweets.
Early Friday morning, Musk tweeted that he would delete 1.5 billion accounts to free up usernames for current users. He also said he would add a feature that would allow Twitter users to see the number of people that read or interact with their tweets.
"Tweets will show view count in a few weeks, just like videos do. Twitter is much more alive than people think," Musk said.
A photo illustration with Twitter owner Elon Musk. (Getty Images/iStock / Getty Images)
In other tweets, Musk said he would be deleting accounts that had not logged in "for years" to free up usernames for current users.
"Twitter will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts," the Twitter CEO wrote.
He added: "These are obvious account deletions with no tweets & no log in for years."
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Elon Musk’s Twitter account is displayed on the screen of an iPhone on April 26, 2022, in Paris, France. | Getty Images
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The changes come as Musk is moving the company away from a tool regulating the speech of its users — for political convenience or otherwise — and toward a free exchange of ideas.
They also come as Musk has unveiled a trove of internal documents showing how Twitter executives influenced the platform, suspended users and reduced an account or post’s reach to other users.
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Musk dubbed these documents the "Twitter Files," which he shared with Substack journalist Matt Taibbi and journalist Bari Weiss.
The files allegedly show Twitter’s ever-persistent content moderation was decided on "at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role."