Then one day after not logging in for a month or two my account was gone. I assumed there was some major mastodon upgrade I missed or something and they nuked all the accounts.
This isn't true, or at least there's more nuance to it: I just logged in to my number-based account which I must have last used in 2002-ish while playing Ultima Online, as another commenter in this thread mentioned. My account still existed and all of my contacts were still there.
One day, about 5 years ago or so, I tried to login to my yahoo account that was still active at the time and I couldn't even login. They just said my account no longer exists! WTF! the account I had been using for over 10 years simply ceased to exist from one day to another. After that, I vowed to never use another yahoo product again.
No I highly doubt it. This is most likely as they say a GDPR issue. Per the GDPR they'll have to keep track of which users have agreed to which version of the ToS and Privacy Policy and make sure that they only process their data in accordance. This is a PITA, much easier to deem accounts inactive and delete their data. They've probably been contacted by the data commissioner of some EU country and asked nicely to comply with the GDPR.
A second, somewhat related issue, is that these inactive accounts might also be used by all the russian state trolls. It's much harder to detect when old accounts start doing suspicious things than brand new ones, especially if you don't have a robust process in place for flagging inactive users.
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