The other advice I saw was to delete your phone and email address and all profile content and then scramble your user name and handle before hitting deactivate
I’m planning on keeping my handle. I have reasons for doing so, even though I’m a tiny account. But it will be dormant. In a few years when it no longer matters I’ll just delete it.
Super duper informative and I thank you so much for posting this. I went to delete and can’t remember my pw and put it off cause I didn’t feel like dealing with that during the holiday. This is perfect!
Love your reference, btw! My daughter had a Murder, She Wrote themed birthday party when she turned nine! Fun fact. 😭
I might just go down with the ship, or not? Thanks for your advice!
Thanks! I just followed you lol. It works. Great advice! I just posted a bunch of my poetry, which is falling on deaf ears. I really don’t care though because it’s out there at least yay!!! 🙏🏼
You follow other people's accounts that you like, most will follow you back in return unless they are big names/accounts. Also, you can look for starter packs of people to follow - there are MANY - & those will yield some followers as well. It's a reciprocal place. I followed you - you follow me.
You can go to anyone's profile - like Allison Gill's, here, the MuellerSheWrote account - and look at the horizontal menu under her cover photo. You'll see a list of items, including 'starter packs' - click on that and hit 'follow all' or 'subscribe' and you'll automatically follow everyone on it.
Oh wow!!! Thanks for your help! This is great! I’ll try that now 😊. I’ll reach out if I have problems or questions. I’m not very saavy and the curve of learning has been almost vertical, pour moi!!! 😊
Xcellent ideas for leaving the nasty X in your rear view mirror while practicing safe X. Hopefully it will prevent any future stalking events in our lives and our new social media choices.
Thank you for passing on the info!
My 2FA stopped working after I deleted all my tweets and posted my goodbye/redirect message. I logged out and a few days later tried to log back in and my Duo code wouldn't work.
I contacted customer service and they said there's nothing they could do and suggested I just make a new account 🤷🏾♂️
I am just squatting there as well. The day after the election, I decided to stop posting there and make my Bluesky account (which I had long before the "X-odus") my main home.
This is REALLY good advice. As an extra step there is a way to transfer your posts to BlueSky of you want to, using @blueark.app , and THEN delete them off Twitter.
I deleted the app after @SissySpaceX algorithm locked my account for explaining metaphorically how Americans “shot themselves in the foot” by electing Trump again…
They locked me out of my account twice. Once for calling MTG white tr*sh and once for calling the former WH squatter a word that rhymes with turderer for the way he mishandled Covid.
Hmm... Interesting point. But I already deactivated.
I'll sign up on the 31st day, grab my old handle, and let it sit empty. Maybe I'll log in once every four months or so to find one post to like, so they don't declare the account inactive and delete it.
Thanks for posting this. The instructions are slightly different if you access x online rather than through the app, but it is easy enough to follow the general principles.
I knew it was intentional and malevolent when someone grabbed my handle after the 30-day deactivation period, as they used the account to harass and make fun of me.
I took the app off my phone . Now ,it's on my iPad in the kitchen that I only really use as a tv . I look here and there, but my engagement is over there as I'm not giving him any more power.
Bedankt! Ik denk er nog even over na. Heb niet echt zin om geld uit te geven aan het verlaten van X, maar alle berichten met de hand verwijderen is wel een klusje...
Ik moest zo’n 4000 posts doorscrollen. En 10.000 likes. Heel gek: voor juli 2022 kon ik de posts niet meer zien, en voor september 2022 kan ik niets meer “unliken”. Komt wel overeen met het moment waarop Elno die club overnam….daarom vertrouw ik hem dus niet.
Wie vertrouw je niet, X, Musk of de man achter de advertentie om je Twitter account niet zomaar op te zeggen, maar eerst je tweets stuk voor stuk te verwijderen, of daar een duur abonnement voor af te sluiten?
Thanks Alison. I DID delete, but I will check if I am still within my 30 days so I can keep it. I knew there was a security reason to do so, but I couldn't find it until you posted this. So THANK YOU!!!!!
Thanks for posting this. I was thrilled when I deactivated my account but hadn’t considered that it could then be taken by someone else. Fortunately, it’s been less than 30 days since I initiated deactivation, so I was able to undo it and follow these steps instead.
I'm not planning to burn bridges but I'm "bookmarking" 📌 this just in case.
Downloaded everything some weeks ago. Shifted most of my activity form Twitter to Bluesky. No changes on my side on Mastodon which is also awsome for some things.
I'm happy to have Elmo hosting my 4GB garbage indefinitely!
There is no way you can keep bots away. All the bot has to do is add a period or dash or just change one letter and it’s in. All that doesn’t matter, as bots talking to other bots is a real echo chamber. Advertisers will see that. The fewer real accounts on musk’s platform, the better.
Deleted my account over a year ago. Not that my name matters, but if it did there’s nothing I can do about it now.
Still scratching my head at those of you who are just now considering leaving. But anyway, however you do it, get it done and let the platform wither. Don’t support it another day.
Also would it not be great to flood x with inactive users and watch advertisers waste money on there while half the ad users they are targeting are snoozing? Low ROI means advertisers will spend their money elsewhere…
I wanted to delete my account on Nov 7, but was locked out on Nov 6 and the validation system has persistent "technical difficulties". So I guess it worked out ok in the end....
If you're hanging onto your X account to keep trolls from moving in (or long enough to hand-delete your thousands of old tweets) ...consider changing your avatar to a blue butterfly. It'll drive Elon nuts when users run searches and see "fields of blue butterflies." Just an idea.
Calm down Agatha. It’s a suggestion. You can choose not to follow. And yes, social media is not my real job. I do not share a chunk of my life on these apps and so do not have this mess to deal with now.
Thanks for sharing. Although I had deleted my X account, it hasn’t been 30 days so I was able to login & follow your directions changing everything I could identifying me. I plan to let it sit unused indefinitely.
So what do we do if we’ve already deactivated our account? I didn’t know this. I wish I had known before I deactivated my account. Dumb question, is deactivated same as deleted on X??
I just quit using mine - not that anyone would want the name but this is a great point. I was too lazy to figure out deleting it 😂 I left Twitter the day Musk said he would let Trump return.
After one of Leon’s royal snit fits over people leaving, I deactivated (could not find a way to delete) my account and, as if Leon personally wanted to have the last word, the app “warned” me: if I didn’t reactivate within a certain time, my account would belong to X & I would not be allowed back.😏
Yeah, my name doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter, Elon has literally he owns your user names. He can just seize them to be if you squat long enough. Meanwhile, staying on the site continues it to maintain relevance. This is stupid, you should definitely delete your account.
This is what I'm being forced to do by Tw. I'm locked out for no reason-can't access my account so it will languish forever. Would prefer to be a statistic of one who left but alas...
I don’t think anyone cares about turning my name into a bot, and I don’t want my presence to boost his numbers. Those who are influencers should probably heed this advice though.
Why would you care? If you are someone of any importance then such an outcome only serves to strengthen the argument for leaving. It's called X for a reason.
Banned accounts still exist, they aren’t delete. I got permabanned once, I threatened to sue Elon because legally it said in the terms that you have to be allowed to delete your account, and I couldn’t do that with it locked forever.
He gave it back to me, no issues.
I deleted my Twitter account because they tried to add in that voice calling feature, that REVEALED YOUR IP ADDRESS to the person calling you even if you didn't answer.
FFS. Really? There are so many more important things to be afraid of than someone impersonating you on Xhitter. Make a very clear Xhit that you are leaving, stating why, and perhaps warning that any future posts under your name will not be from you and then delete away.
Yeah, my plan is to just delete the data and lock the account. I'm trying to move daily engagement here in full as quickly as possible, which is easier since SO MANY news sources are visible in my feed, which was not the case on Twitter.
I know that after I deactivated my account, I worried about what would happen to the user data. Now we know that all those tweets disappear in 30 days and the username is up for grabs. But what about the other data, like location info, OS version, etc?
I won’t add to Musk’s audience or algorithm by keeping an account there. I won’t help his advertisers by staying there either. He’s a mouthpiece for Putin and so is his platform.
You could just say on other accounts, that you're not on there and it's a fake. Just like everyone else does when bot impersonation accounts spring up here and everywhere else. That sounds like an excuse to stay clinging to twitter. "They might make a fake of you!" So? Say it isn't. People can tell
Meh. It’ll just turn out like this, though. Imagine this but multiply it millions of times—because aside from MAGAs, the bots are all that’s left there. And those weird tacky Temu ads. https://youtu.be/froKBoKnD1U?si=9QPNENEKsdPceWS1
I changed my entire profile (user name, email, bio info) and deleted all my following and content. I'm now going to deactivate and remove the app from all devices. No regrets, and 1 more to add to the # of bleeding accounts from the cesspool.
I think this advice is more for the major influencers on Twitter, which I totally get for them. For me, I deleted my account because I want my data to be as far away from Leon as possible come January (although I'm sure he'll get access one way or another, but doing my best to mitigate)...
It also deletes all of your followers so it’s not like someone will pick up the handle with 0 followers and people will be duped into thinking it’s the real person who left. 🤷🏼♀️
Someone over there once did use my name, background and profile pic. When I contacted Twitter they couldn’t have cared less. Told me it wasn’t stealing my identity to do that, nothing to see there. I was like, wtf?
Just want to point out that the total number of users isn't really what matters to advertisers. They care about DAU and MAU stats (daily and monthly active users) and that's broadly what justifies ad rates. A lot of Idle and low-activity accounts will negatively impact the bottom line for X.
Curious. Does that also included banned accounts? My first account was so old it was my name. I've checked in on it a few times and far as I can tell, it's still banned. As I can't gain access to it anymore, technically no one else should be able to either, or use my name because it's already taken.
This. It’s about taking users away from x. If you leave it out there x can claim more actual users than they have thus more revenue from advertising. Just delete it. No one wants your user name unless you are famous.
I'm a nobody too except for a special few whose attention was unpleasant and prompted a social media cleanse and profile change across the board. Surely over caution on my part after so long but I feel better just letting the account drift empty as a ghost ship over there.
I might have been paranoid but I slowly changed all my personal details on the account, deleted all my friends & media , requested all the data and deleted that, anything I could do to muddy the waters. Left it a week, before leaving. I trust them less than a rattlesnake.
I wonder if this is real or would just keep their numbers up… I mean I get the logic, but also there’s other ways they can manipulate the account, collect data & steal your info. Feels like no good options. Is it identity theft if someone tries to impersonate you? Are there legal options here?
Yes - but I chose to lose the name.
For me stepping away from the pro Nazi site was Imperative and I did it the same day Musk allowed TFG account to be unlocked , Sun November 20, 2022
In the fight against Nazis and in the memory of 9 year old me who read Diary of Anne Frank
Which is like half of Twitter lol. Remember the blue check accts with almost no tweets and few followers that looked like they had an acct for 5 years or more. Always thought they were old accts being reused.
There are apps that will delete your old tweets. The only one I remember hearing about is redact, but do a search on bluesky for DELETE ALL TWEETS and there are more ways.
I just removed the app locally because I'd rather the storage still be taken for X to pay for (even though I bet it's maybe .001 cent) and username is intact.
It's for the big accounts and I don't blame them. The uncle fuckers are waiting to use their names to post their bullshit. Libs of blue sky is on Twitter bragging about it and has screen shots of bluesky account post talking shit like it's her job. I counted 100 post in one day.
They're so bored without us...none of them can stand each other and all they have to talk about is US.
Its pathetic, but its also already stale for a lot of them.
What will they have to talk about once the majority is tired of the same old same old??
While I’m not famous, I don’t want anyone using my actual name. I had already deleted so was able to grab it with a new account and shut down everything on the account as recommended
Twitter locked my account temporarily as I notified the remaining of followers that I move over here.
Good times 🙄
Was just in the process of “house cleaning”…
Meh. Guessing this was written by someone looking to keep the droves of people leaving. Trying to stop the bleeding. Tweets and DM deleted first. See ya !
Question! I deactivated on 11/8. Use a fake name, but decided to go back in and delete content, just to be safe. Went in and deleted a couple 100 posts and suddenly the remaining 2000+ disappeared. Went to replies to do the same and while deleting, they disappeared. Also have no likes now, BUT…
Everything is previously LIKED is all lined up under LIKES, but without the heart selected. Is it possible I was deleted 2 days after I reactived, days before the 30 day deletion of my content? Or has mELON started confiscating accounts that are deleting content, to later persecute us?
I just made those changes. Checked an acct I followed for National security discussions -- legal updates and he has changed his acct to Protected posts too.
Thanks for this. As a twitter nobody, I didn't figure I needed to worry about deleting and losing my handle. The article reminded me I do have some ties between that account and my small business. So, best to be safe. Thanks again.
Thanks for this info.
I had already decided to stop posting on Twitter, but leave my account intact, just in case "Leon" decides he's had enough & chooses to sell Twitter or if I decide I absolutely have to rant there. But now I have a better reason to leave, but not cancel.
Comments
I might just go down with the ship, or not? Thanks for your advice!
🫶🏼🩵🤲🏼🎶
🫶🏼🩵🤲🏼🎶
Thank you for passing on the info!
I contacted customer service and they said there's nothing they could do and suggested I just make a new account 🤷🏾♂️
347k+ likes? Definitely not.
I suppose that simplifies the choices.
I'll sign up on the 31st day, grab my old handle, and let it sit empty. Maybe I'll log in once every four months or so to find one post to like, so they don't declare the account inactive and delete it.
(formerly: #bonjouryall)
Betalen ik je content uit handen te geven.
Heel bijzonder verdienmodel. 💰
Downloaded everything some weeks ago. Shifted most of my activity form Twitter to Bluesky. No changes on my side on Mastodon which is also awsome for some things.
I'm happy to have Elmo hosting my 4GB garbage indefinitely!
I've tried to tell others.
This article is better than I could have ever explained the concept in a billion years.
Kudos
Still scratching my head at those of you who are just now considering leaving. But anyway, however you do it, get it done and let the platform wither. Don’t support it another day.
Nobody would bother to use my "excretion" (ha!)
name.
Must work on that so I can keep being a wonderful nobody.
Feng Shui your SM experience because there are definitely more important things in life.
You could be gone tomorrow. Do you really want to spend your last day worried about X?
Just let it go.🤷♀️
https://www.tweeteraser.com/resources/does-twitter-delete-inactive-accounts-discover-xs-policy/
Do you not have a real job? Is that why you make suggestions like this?
If you delete it, it has none of your followers
What X does with it is irrelevant, there are always fakes for big accounts anyway
(Axed my account shortly after Elon bought it).
Less accounts on Twitter, the better.
I got banned for talking shit to Elon, basically. I forget the exact content of the post.
He gave it back to me, no issues.
Hey, I was in pure battle mode by that point.
It’s just a dead husk.
you can reactivate it within 30 days and it will be as you left it. after 30 days and it is "deleted"
Response: someone can already do that with a username just one character different from yours.
Conclusion: I deleted my account. I want Elmo to have one fewer users. Hope you do too.
So I deleted it. And it felt good.
🫠💞
For me stepping away from the pro Nazi site was Imperative and I did it the same day Musk allowed TFG account to be unlocked , Sun November 20, 2022
In the fight against Nazis and in the memory of 9 year old me who read Diary of Anne Frank
Stop trying to be an advocate when you know you’re just a narcissist.
In my defense, he was being a racist and sexist piece of shit.
I don't give a crap what happens on that platform. When even Twitter got canceled on Twitter, I just laughed and moved on.
Now that guys speaks for all of us 🤨
Trump has surrounded himself with qnon criminals. Serious. Cash Patel??
Fascism is at America s door
Sigh…
Its pathetic, but its also already stale for a lot of them.
What will they have to talk about once the majority is tired of the same old same old??
Good times 🙄
Was just in the process of “house cleaning”…
But why not make your account private right at the start and then take however long it takes to delete your tweets and likes?
I had already decided to stop posting on Twitter, but leave my account intact, just in case "Leon" decides he's had enough & chooses to sell Twitter or if I decide I absolutely have to rant there. But now I have a better reason to leave, but not cancel.