Twitter is about to be flooded with a ton of accounts that were previously suspended.
According to a new report from Platformer, Elon Musk has begun the process of reinstating around 62,000 Twitter accounts that were suspended by the company prior to the billionaire’s takeover back in October. The flood of accounts being released back onto the platform is internally being called “the Big Bang.”
In fact, since Musk’s poll, Twitter has begun the process of reinstating roughly 62,000 accounts with more than 10,000 followers, Platformer has learned, including one account that has over 5 million followers, and 75 accounts with over 1 million followers. (The identities of the accounts could not be learned before press time.) Internally, employees have referred to this event as “the Big Bang.”
The reinstatement of these previously suspended accounts comes on the same week that Musk is hoping to relaunch Twitter Blue which was unveiled as a catastrophe last month after tons of users impersonated major companies and people, wreaking havoc on the platform and, in some cases, some company’s stock performance.
According to an internal document, Musk is sticking with his original plan of using credit card numbers and mobile phone identifiers to find and suspend bad actors who seek to misuse Twitter Blue when it relaunches again.
“We anticipated early efforts like this from bad actors, and we are adapting dynamically to prevent and detect them,” the document reads. What about “large scale coordinated misinformation attacks funded by wealthy organizations or governments?” the document asks. “Large-scale bad actors would also require a huge supply of unique credit card numbers and mobile phones,” the document says. “As we detect and suspend these, the logistical hurdles to re-offend at scale become insurmountable.”
With the flood of suspended accounts coming back and potentially Twitter Blue relaunching launching in the same week, Twitter could be in for another temporary public relations disaster. Or not. Who knows what will happen anymore!
