You might be wondering where those people went. After all, it can seem like they blocked you. Are there signs that prove otherwise? How do you tell if someone deactivated their Twitter account as opposed to blocking? Believe it or not, you can tell the difference. By exploring the fine details, you’ll understand, too.
What Does a Deactivated Twitter Account Look Like?
When you go to a Twitter profile that was deactivated, you’ll still be able to view their name and @; as long as their profile was deactivated in the past 30 days and has not been deleted yet. However, their profile picture will be blank and it will say “This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another”, when you go to the profile. When you see this message on a profile, their account has been deactivated in the past 30 days. If the account was deleted, you wouldn’t be able to see their username If the user’s profile at all, so there’s a chance they may still reactivate their account. If they have been banned, it will say “Account Suspended”, so you’ll know whether they deactivated their account or if it was banned. Finally, if you were blocked, it’ll simply say they blocked you when you view their profile, and you won’t be able to see their tweets, just like they won’t be able to see yours.
Am I Blocked or Did They Deactivate Their Twitter Account?
If you suspect you’ve been blocked, try simply visiting their profile. If you are blocked, it will tell you (when visiting their profile, it would say for example “You’re blocked. You can’t follow or see @jack’s tweets.”) However, if their account was deactivated, it will say “This account doesn’t exist.”, so if you are met with this message then you know their account was deactivated. It will also tell you if the account was suspended for violating rules, so if it says this then you know they didn’t deactivate their account intentionally.
How to Tell If Someone Deactivated their Twitter
Try and Search For Their Name
If you want to know if someone’s account was deactivated, the first thing you should try is searching up their name or Twitter handle. When you go to the profile, if you can see their recent tweets, likes, followers etc. then their profile is available. However, if their account is deactivated, it’ll say “This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another.” This will always mean the account is either deactivated or deleted.
Their Likes Disappear From Your Tweets
Another way to know someone’s account was deactivated is to check your tweets or posts they’ve liked in the past. If you don’t see the likes from the user that were previously there, If you aren’t blocked and their account is unavailable. then their account was probably deactivated. When a Twitter account is deactivated, all their posts, tweets, likes and comments are gone. Unless they choose to activate their account within 30 days, then all of this content will be gone forever, along with their profile.
Check If You Can See Your Message Thread With Them
When an account on Twitter is deactivated, all their messages, DMs and conversations disappear. So, a good way of seeing if someone deactivated us to look for the conversation you had with them in the past on Twitter; if it’s not there, they deactivated or deleted their account. However, if they re-activate their account, everything will be set back to normal, like they never deactivated in the first place. Because if this, checking your DM’s is a good way of checking if someone’s account is re-activated; as long as you had DM’s with this person in the past, you’ll see their name pop back up in your direct messages whenever they reactivate.
Check If Their Bookmarked Posts Are Still There
If you’ve had any bookmarked posts from the user in question, you could try to find their posts in your bookmarks. To check your bookmarks, tap your profile picture or icon. Then, from this menu, tap bookmarks. You can now search through all your bookmarked posts. If you can’t find the posts from the user in question when you had them bookmarked before, then this is another sign they deactivated their account.
Your Follower Count Has Gone Down By One
When an account is deactivated, all their followers and following are gone until they reactivate it. This could explain why you lost a follower; they might have deactivated and Twitter unfollowed them automatically. You can also search through your followers list by going to followers from your profile. There’ll be a search tab at the top and you can type in any specific user to see if they are following you. You can also remove followers if you like.
If Someone Deactivates Their Twitter Can You Still Search For Them
Yes, you can still search for them. However, when you go to the account, you’ll be met with “This account does not exist”. It will specify if the profile was banned for violating rules; otherwise, the account was deactivated. If the accounts deactivated, you’ll be able to see some things like their @ and Twitter name, but almost everything else will be unavailable until they activate their account back up. Their profile picture will turn to default and you won’t be able to see their tweets, likes, comments, replies, etc.
Check if Twitter is down
If a profile is unavailable but you don’t believe they’d deactivate their account, or if you’re having any issues with Twitter, it’s always a good idea to check if twitters servers are down or malfunctioning. To do this, go to downdetector.com, or google search ‘is Twitter down downdetector’. If Twitter is down, check their profile again at a later time. It may just say their profile is unavailable not because they deactivated, but because the Twitter servers are down.
Followers and Following
Another sign that someone has deactivated their Twitter account is by viewing your Followers and Following page. However, it can also be a sign that someone blocked you. When a user removes themselves from Twitter – deactivation or block – your Followers and Following will go down. After all, they are no longer a part of Twitter’s wilderness.
Deactivation: the First Step to Deleting Your Twitter Account
Deactivating your account and deleting your account are two different sides of the same coin. In order to delete your Twitter account, you have to first deactivate it. Think of it as temporarily silencing your account, if only for a few days. This process will last for 30 days. For 30 whole days, your account can remain in limbo. But if you keep it there past those 30 days, your account is gone for good. Poof. No more Twitter. Everything from your tweets to Twitter feed are completely scrubbed clean. Your account, for all intents and purposes, has been deleted. In the grand scheme of things, why does that matter? Well, it’s one of the first signs that someone deactivated their Twitter account. If someone deactivated their Twitter account, and you visit their profile, you won’t see anything. You won’t see any tweets, no Twitter feed, nothing. It’s as if they don’t exist anymore.
Blocked VS Deactivation
Of course, this can be confusing at first. When you visit a Twitter feed that has nothing, not even their profile exists, people assume the worst: they were blocked. And that can be a disheartening experience. Imagine a buddy of yours all of a sudden dropping you from Twitter. You start to wonder if you said or did something to offend. You start questioning your actions and your motives until you’ve lost who you are. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the point still stands: it sucks and you don’t know what’s going on. Thankfully, there’s a very clear difference between being blocked and a deactivated account. When you visit a blocked account, even if you use the URL for a direct connection, you’ll see the message “You are blocked from following @[name] and viewing @[name]’s Tweets.” When you visit the page of a deactivated user, you don’t see anything, not even a message. Again, it’s as if they disappeared. On top of that, if you try to directly message a user you’ve been blocked by, you’ll still get the same message, “You are blocked from following @[name] and viewing @[name]’s Tweets.” You can’t message a user that’s deactivated their Twitter account.
Avoiding Third-Party Traps
Twitter doesn’t keep an account deactivated indefinitely. After 30 days, the account is gone for good. If you forget to reactivate before your time limit is up, well, that’s not Twitter’s problem. They can’t retrieve it after that. Unfortunately, this has led malicious individuals to take advantage of frustrated people. Through need, frustration and desperation, APIs are “developed” to “retrieve” your account. Websites and software will claim they can retrieve your account or retrieve Tweets that you lost due to your account being deleted. So, let’s be clear on this: it does NOT work that way. Twitter has a very strict attitude towards third-party APIs. Automation of any kind could have you out the door if it violates Twitter’s rules. While it’s largely on you if you authorize a bad service and become a victim of it, you can be double-tapped by Twitter suspending or restricting you.
Bottom Line
A Twitter user seemingly disappearing can have you scratching your head. Where did they go? Use the, admittedly, limited clues to discover their whereabouts. Twitter makes it clear with an on-screen message if you’ve been blocked. Otherwise, they are suspended or they deactivated their account.
