A little less than two weeks ago, Elon Musk announced that Twitter plans on permanently removing so-called “dormant accounts” that have remained unused for several years.
Now, Google follows suit and announced just now that users will have to log in to their email accounts at least once every 2 years to keep their accounts alive.
If they don’t, Google may permanently delete their accounts with no hope of getting them back. This includes:
- Your Google Docs
- Your Google Drive items
- Your Meet items
- Your Calendar
- Everything else connected to your Google account
Before, Google would just delete the data from your Google account if you didn’t use it for several years. But now, they’ve decided to delete everything, including the account itself.
To reiterate, they’ll delete your Google accounter after two years of inactivity.
Will Other Platforms Do the Same?
Twitter’s decision to delete inactive accounts might have set in motion a chain of events that will likely result in other social media platforms doing the same.
There are rumors that Meta will implement the same thing on Facebook and Instagram. As of now, Facebook’s policy says that accounts will be deleted only if it’s proven that it was hacked or if the owner cannot be confirmed for an extended period of time.
Tinder also took a radical decision and banned social handles from public bios. They’ve claimed that the app shouldn’t be used for business promotion or advertisement.
Instead, it’s a social app that aims to help people find a partner. Turning it into a business-centric platform would go against that goal, according to them.
Elon Musk said that “We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop” back on May 9th when he announced the deletion of inactive Twitter accounts.
If you don’t log into your Twitter account at least every 30 days, you might wake up without an account one day.
