How to remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2023

Onur ERGINOGLU
5 min readDec 16, 2020

There are lots of inactive users on Twitter. Inactive Twitter accounts are created but not used by its user for weeks, months, and even years. Inactive followers are friends who do not engage with you on Twitter. They are just in your follower or friends list, and they will never be interacting with your Twitter account.

According to the Inactive account policy of Twitter, inactivity is based on logging in. So, to keep your Twitter account alive, you should be sure to log in once at least every six months.

“We encourage people to actively log in and use Twitter when they register an account. To keep your account active, be sure to log in at least every 6 months. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.”

However, inactive accounts could also be defined as Twitter accounts logging in but do not engage anyway via liking, retweeting and replying, etc. Twitter will do nothing for those ‘ghost accounts,’ which can also be defined as inactive accounts. So, you will have to remove inactive Twitter accounts to have a better start in 2022.

You can also download Circleboom iOS Twitter app.

Why should we remove inactive Twitter accounts?

If you don’t know the user behind inactive accounts in person, those accounts could even be made by spammers or bots. So, it is better.

  • To remove inactive Twitter accounts. Well, how to remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021.
  • Inactive accounts may never tweet again. There won’t come back tweeting, probably.
  • Such Inactive accounts may belong to Twitter users who do not interact with anyone. So, it is a high possibility that they will never engage your tweets. So, it is better to get rid of those inactive accounts.

Moreover, inactive accounts may ruin your follower/following ratio, which is quite essential for a successful Twitter account. Suppose you pay regard that, you should learn how to remove inactive Twitter accounts.

Unfollowing inactive accounts can be highly beneficial as you only connect with active Twitter followers. Also, getting rid of inactive Twitter accounts will keep your account free of suspicious accounts. Let’s learn how to remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021:

How to spot and remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021

Circleboom lets you list and clean up your account from top to bottom. With Circleboom’s Inactive & Overactives feature, you will be able to spot and remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021 that don’t last longer than 30 days.

Step #1: Log in to the Circleboom.

You can log in by authenticating your Twitter account within a few seconds.

Step #2: On the dashboard, click on the “The Circle” tab, and from the top-down menu, select “Inactives”.

Now, Circleboom will have been listed all the accounts to let you remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021.

Step #3: If you want to search for inactive Twitter accounts with specific keywords or hashtags, you can use the smart search on the left.

Via the search bar, you can search for keywords, hashtags, locations, language, and of course, usernames. The smart search will check your search terms from all inactive accounts and give you a response.

Step #4: As the last step, you should select all the inactive Twitter accounts to remove them.

Then you can add them to a Twitter list via the blue “Add to Twitter List” button.

Due to the change in Twitter Policy, we cannot provide this service on our dashboard. So, you can remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2021 via the list you’ve created on the Circleboom dashboard.

We’ve also prepared a hands-on video for those who may prefer to remove inactive Twitter accounts in 2023

Note: Circleboom lists all inactive Twitter accounts by analyzing those accounts. In the meanwhile, every search result that we view on the grid clearly shows the result profile image, name, and place, as well as a comprehensive profile link on it to help our users verify it based on their profile. Often some of your listing accounts may be your friends. However, they are inactive users, but they are not locked, bot accounts, or unreachable ones. And thus, always avoid the bulk process take an individual look at the profile of the account.

Remove inactive Twitter accounts with Code

You can use the Twitter API and a programming language such as Python to write a script that block or unblock a specific user by making a POST request to the “blocks/create” and “blocks/destroy” endpoints of the Twitter API, passing in the user’s Twitter handle as a parameter.

Here is an example of how to block a user using the Python library tweepy:

import tweepy

# Set up your API keys
consumer_key = "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY"
consumer_secret = "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
access_token = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
access_token_secret = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET"

# Authenticate with the Twitter API
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

# The user's Twitter handle you want to block
user_to_block = "username"

# Block the user
api.create_block(user_to_block)

Here is an example of how to unblock a user using the Python library tweepy:

import tweepy

# Set up your API keys
consumer_key = "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY"
consumer_secret = "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
access_token = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
access_token_secret = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET"

# Authenticate with the Twitter API
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

# The user's Twitter handle you want to unblock
user_to_unblock = "username"

# Unblock the user
api.destroy_block(user_to_unblock)

Please keep in mind that the Twitter API rate limits the number of requests that can be made within a certain period of time, so you might want to add rate limiting and error handling code to your script. Also, as I mentioned before, it is against the Twitter’s API terms of service to automate the process of blocking or unblocking users. So, please make sure to read their API policy carefully before proceeding.

We have built a whitelist module to avoid unwanted unfollows and incorporated it into all the Circleboom’s Inactive & Overactives feature.

To learn about the Whitelist function, better have a look at our How to Whitelist My Twitter Followers article.

Wrapping Up

Controlling your Twitter account can be very easy if you’re using the right service like Circleboom. Moreover, cleaning up your Twitter account of inactive accounts and fake accounts will give you a better follow/following ratio and provide you with an accurate estimation of your Twitter connections.

Originally published at https://blog.circleboom.com on December 16, 2020.

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Onur ERGINOGLU

#Digitaljournalism #onlinejournalism #Digitalmarketing