Twitter will delete 1.5 billion accounts to free up space: Elon Musk

Twitter CEO Elon Musk on December 9 said that 1.5 billion accounts on the social media platform that have not tweeted or logged in will be deleted to free up space.

"Twitter will soon start freeing the space of 1.5 billion accounts," Musk tweeted.

These are obvious account deletions with no tweets & no log in for years, he added to the thread.



This is not the first time the billionaire has expressed his displeasure with bots. Musk had earlier put the $44-billion Twitter deal on hold citing concerns over bots.

Earlier in the day, Musk also said that DMs should be encrypted in response to Twitter user asking him about his "position on DMs and user privacy rights"

Read | Twitter Files: Investigation shows Twitter built secret blacklists, restricted visibility of accounts

"DMs should be encrypted, so that it is impossible for anyone at Twitter to see the public’s DMs, just as is the case with Signal or iMessage," Musk tweeted.


Meanwhile, Twitter Inc will roll out new controls as soon as next week to let companies prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing certain keywords, the social media platform told advertisers, as per a Reuters report.

The new controls are part of Twitter's effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated.

Twitter earns nearly 90% of its revenue from selling digital ads. Musk recently attributed a "massive drop in revenue" to civil rights organizations that have pressured brands to pause their Twitter ads.