With a lot of adverse things going in the world of social media, looks like Twitter is trying its best to hang on to user’s privacy and their trust. Recently, Twitter has taken a step to kick off spammers from the platform. Will it work? And will it be enough? If you have such questions in your mind, then let’s learn more about it!
What Is Twitter’s Plan?
Twitter has limited the number of Twitter accounts a user can follow, the limit has gone down from 1000 to 400 per day. Wow, this is something!
Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 8, 2019
Behind the change is the idea that it will help prevent spammers from spreading their networks by following, then unfollowing accounts on Twitter in “bulk, aggressive or indiscriminate manner” This action violates Twitter policies.
Quite a number of accounts following the same practice were banned from Twitter’s API.
A lot of companies had been providing tools which enables customers to follow a large number of users automatically with minimum efforts. This is one of the growth tactics, as people generally follow back without paying much attention that they have actually followed a bot.
Similarly, the organizations also provide tools to unfollow Twitter accounts in bulk who don’t follow back the bot.
Twitter’s first step was to suspend apps violating rules under “following and follow churn.” However, this didn’t completely resolve the issue. Therefore, this time Twitter has target spammers by limiting the number of people a Twitter user can follow.
Twitter Reviewing Apps To Prevent API AbuseRead this to know about Twitter advanced warning for app developers and requiring to get paid for the usage.Will The Move Be Appreciated?
As not all the active users are spammers and they might not like the restrictions put by Twitter.
As soon as the news of this change broke, there was a lot of buzz. In response to Twitter’s change tweet, a lot of users asked about the significance of limiting the number to 400.
This doesn’t make sense as the number is still far from the number which a regular Twitter user could follow in a given day.
Has Twitter thought, this will not stop businesses to interact with their customers via DM or send them URL to their inbox? So, this will not stop the conversation, and no follow or unfollow tactic required!
On responses to all these questions, Twitter’s representative explained the concept of choosing 400 as the limit, “We looked at follow behavior at various thresholds, and selected 400 as a reasonable limit that stopped most spam while not affecting legitimate users.”
With all the previous attempts and changes, it is clear that Twitter is trying hard to fight off the spam issue. The change in reporting tools and new security measures are some of them to combat the increasing number of spammers.
It is good to see a social media platform is not only focusing on user growth but also working on improving user experience by eliminating spammers. This will not only stop users who use spam for monetary gains but will also reduce fake news which are used to disrupt elections and another opinion-oriented event.
Well these changes could get negative response in the beginning, but they will have a positive impact in the future. Bold move Twitter! Way to go!
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