NPR Says Elon Musk Threatened to Give Its Twitter Handle Away Unless It Tweets Again
thewrap.comstopped using Twitter on April 12 after the label “State-Affiliated Media” was added to its account, a move apparently ordered by Musk himself.
The label was later changed to “government funded,” which is also inaccurate. According to NPR, this week Musk sent an unprompted email to the outlet asking, “So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?”After some back and forth, Musk eventually told NPR, “Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant.
Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”NPR says it asked Musk if he intends to change Twitter’s terms of service which, the outlet notes, states that inactivity is based on whether or not a user has logged in at least once every 30 days, not on how often it actually tweets.
The exact phrasing is: “To keep your account active, be sure to log in at least every 30 days. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.”While NPR didn’t say so expressly, it has only been 20 days since it stopped tweeting.
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