Fran Finney, the wife of computer scientist Hal Finney, the recipient of Satoshi Nakamoto's first Bitcoin blockchain transaction, has reactivated her late husband's Twitter account amid concerns that Twitter CEO Elon Musk , you could remove the content from the social media platform due to inactivity.
Many Crypto Twitter users reported on Dec. 16 that Finney's account registered activity for the first time in more than 12 years. Some speculated that a hacker might have taken control of Bitcoin (BTC) pioneer account and has more than 71,000 followers, but Fran quickly stepped in to dispel the rumors.
I'm tweeting for Hal [...] to prevent your account from being purged by Elon." said Fran.
I want to keep Hal's account active and will occasionally be posting from his account. When I post I will continue to tag myself as the poster.
— Fran Finney (@franfinney) December 16, 2022
It's unclear whether Fran Finney's intervention can save the cryptocurrency pioneer's social media presence. In the middle of Musk $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which was completed in October, reclaimed he endorsed freedom of expression as "the foundation of a functioning democracy."
However, under Musk's leadership, the social media platform on December 15 removed several accounts controlled by high-profile journalists at institutions including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Accounts tracking the movements of Musk's private flights were also suspended, as was promotion of the social media platform Mastodon, which has attracted many Twitter users following the billionaire's takeover. The CEO of Twitter reclaimed the first one "doxxed my exact location in real time".
Why have journalists' Twitter accounts been suspended? Please explain. And this had better be a GOOD explanation.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 16, 2022
Musk had a net worth of more than $300 billion as of October 2021 before the Twitter acquisition, and around the same time, Tesla's stock price hit an all-time high of $407.36 in November 2021. In about a year, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index He showed that the Tesla CEO had dwindled to the second-richest person on the planet, with a reported net worth of $169 billion at press time.
As CEO, Musk oversaw a number of controversial decisions on Twitter that caused many in the business world to question his acumen. He fired many senior executives, including many members of the platform's content moderation team, and attempted to charge users for "verified" blue checkmarks, leading to many fake accounts with a semblance of legitimacy. The social media platform also saw a spike in tweets containing hate speech and vaccine misinformation, putting advertisers' revenues at risk.
Twitter users appeared to be largely supportive of Fran Finney's efforts to show that the account was still active and beneficial to the crypto community. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also rattle on the platform to express his surprise at the reactivation of the account.
"There should be a way to safeguard historically important accounts," said Twitter user 0xAphelion on Hal Finney's account. "But it's better to be safe."
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Hal Finney was one of the best-known names in the crypto space, as he was one of the first people to reply to Satoshi's post on the cypherpunks mailing list. He passed away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) in 2014 at the age of 58.