San Francisco: Twitter has announced to reinstate those accounts that were locked down owing to age restriction after the new European Union (EU) privacy law came into force on May 25.

In a series of tweets, the micro-blogging platform said on Wednesday that it did not expect the lockdown to happen as some users who opened their accounts when they were 13 are now old enough to use the platform.

Accounts created by those under 13, were frozen owing to the General Data Protection Law (GDPR) which stipulates that the age of consent for using online services should not be lower than 13.

‘We recently made product changes tied to new privacy laws (GDPR) and became aware of accounts that were set up by people when they were younger than 13. We didn’t expect this,’ Twitter Support said in a tweet.

‘These accounts were automatically locked, and we created additional confusion by sending messages to people saying that they’re still under 13 (when many are now older) and need to close their accounts,’ it added.

Twitter said its rules don’t allow anyone under 13 to tweet or create a Twitter account so it is working on a technical solution to delete those Tweets and allow the impacted account holders to continue on Twitter.

‘In the meantime, we’re reaching out to people impacted with options to unlock their account and continue to use Twitter. Instructions from us will come during the coming week,’ the micro-blogging platform said, apologising for the confusion and the inconvenience caused to those who were affected.