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In A Bot Purge Attempt, Twitter Limits Mass Tweets And Making People Lose Followers

There is no doubt about it, Twitter is just full of trolls and bots. Acknowledging that, the microblogging platform finally addresses the issue.

Some Twitter users saw an unpleasant surprise when they attempted to access their accounts: they were told that they were temporarily locked out of their accounts. As Twitter suspended thousands of accounts overnight, they also discovered they've lost a number of followers.

In a move that goes "without political bias," Twitter purges accounts that couldn't prove they're human.

Shortly after this, the hashtag #TwitterLockout began trending.

Twitter is a place where people can talk about almost anything, as long as its within its policy. However, things can get rough when thoughts biases concern political views.

According to a Twitter spokesperson:

"Twitter’s tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias. As part of our ongoing work in safety, we identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse. We also take action on any accounts we find that violate our terms of service, including asking account owners to confirm a phone number so we can confirm a human is behind it. That’s why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone."

To limit bot abuse, Twitter is focusing on three different areas.

First, third-party software can no longer allow users to "simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts." Second, Twitter is banning these third-party apps from simultaneous likes, retweets and follows coordinated across multiple accounts. And third, Twitter’s bot purge prohibits applications from automating posts and actions across multiple separate accounts around a specific topic.

There are exceptions: emergency alerts, public service announcements and weather alerts aren't affected by the exclusions.

Twitter's move in banning accounts, is part of a larger campaign to eliminate automated accounts, which have been a massive problem for the platform. It started planning when it revealed that over 50,000 accounts were linked to Russian propaganda efforts.

This isn't the first time Twitter has taken against a large number of accounts. Previously, the microblogging platform had removed some people's verified badge from accounts associated with white nationalists.

Users aren't happy, and so are conservatives. But forcing "without political bias" is one way that should be done if Twitter wants to clean up its website, by making sure that users there are actual humans.

Published: 
22/02/2018