Elon Musk Says He Is Deleting 1.5 Million Twitter Accounts

Still focused on his seemingly never-ending war on bot and spam accounts, Elon Musk is now vowing to eliminate another 1.5 million accounts from Twitter in an attempt to “free” up space.

In a series of Tweets, Musk said that the accounts targeted to be removed will be users who haven’t logged into Twitter in years and have no Tweets of their own.

He then told his followers that Twitter would soon be rolling out a new update that would give information on why accounts were being “shadowbanned.”

Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022

Musk also (much to the excitement of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey) told users that Twitter would begin showing view counts on Tweets at large, not just videos.

“Twitter is much more alive than people think,” Musk wrote, which garnered a response from Dorsey who said that view counts were a “much better metric” to create transparency on shadow-banning.

Musk’s strong moves towards more transparency on the platform comes following the release of the “Twitter Files,” which revealed that content moderators and other people in positions of power at Twitter were making decisions on and suspending certain content without Dorsey’s knowledge or consent.

Musk has long been an advocate of free speech on Twitter since his early days of acquisition, often likening his vision for the platform to be a “digital town square” where thoughts can be shared freely.