Even as Twitter prepares to roll out new ad controls to prevent misuse of keywords, Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, announced Friday that the company will delete and free the names of 1.5 billion accounts that have been inactive for years on the platform.

“Twitter will soon start freeing the namespace of 1.5 billion accounts. These are obvious account deletions with no tweets and no login for years,” said the billionaire.

Musk also said that the micro-blogging platform is working on a process to inform the users whether their tweets have been suppressed under a process known as “shadow banning” and they can appeal against the ban.

He added that Twitter is also working on a software update that will show true account status, IANS reported from New Delhi.

“So you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” he mentioned.

Twitter has been accused of suppressing certain political speech on the platform.

The “Twitter Files 2” revealed that the micro-blogging platform, under a secret group, made controversial decisions, including ‘shadow banning’ high-profile users without informing then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

“This secret group included the Head of Legal, Policy and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others,” said Bari Weiss, Founder and Editor of The Free Press, in the new “Twitter Files.”

Twitter had earlier denied that it did such things.

Ad Controls To Lure Back Advertisers: Meanwhile, a Reuters report has said that Twitter Inc will roll out new controls as soon as next week to let companies prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing certain keywords, the social media platform told advertisers in an email on Thursday.

The new controls are part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated.

Twitter earns nearly 90 percent of its revenue from selling digital ads. Musk recently attributed a “massive drop in revenue” to civil rights organizations that have pressured brands to pause their Twitter ads.

In a call on Thursday with an advertising industry group, a Twitter representative said the platform was considering bringing its content moderators, many of whom are contracted through third-party vendors, in-house, according to a source familiar with the remarks.

The Twitter representative said bringing content moderators in-house would allow the platform to invest more in moderation for non-English languages, according to the source.

The comments come after Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters that the platform would lean more heavily on automated content moderation.

The email to advertisers on Thursday, which was reviewed by Reuters, said a revamped version of Twitter’s subscription service called Twitter Blue would begin rolling out on Friday.

The subscription will allow accounts to receive a verified check mark. Accounts for individuals will get a blue check, while gold and gray check marks will denote business and government accounts, according to the email.

The subscription price will be $7 per month on the web and $11 per month on Apple devices, the email said.

“We will not be reinstating bad actors, spam accounts and users that engaged in criminal/illegal activity,” Twitter’s note to advertisers said.

Twitter, which has lost many members of its communications team, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.