Twitter Suspends Accounts For 'Tweetdecking'
Twitter has suspended several accounts linked to "tweetdecking," or the practice of sending out the same stolen tweets from different accounts to make tweets go viral.
Many suspended accounts, including @CommonWhiteGirl, @Dory, @SoDamnTrue, and @memeprovider, have garnered millions of followers before being suspended by the social networking site on March 10.
On Feb. 21, API policy and product trust at Twitter Yoel Roth announced on Twitter's blog that the company wanted to keep the social media platform safe and spam-free.
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"Spam is generally defined on Twitter as bulk or aggressive activity that attempts to manipulate or disrupt Twitter or the experience of users on Twitter to drive traffic or attention to unrelated accounts, products, services, or initiatives," the terms of Twitter say.
According to Roth, the most common spam violations seen in the platform is the amplification of tweets using third-party platforms, such as TweetDeck and the Twitter API, to increase likes, retweets, and followers.
"To be clear: Twitter prohibits any attempt to use automation for the purposes of posting or disseminating spam, and such behavior may result in enforcement action," Roth wrote.
Twitter has also come up with changes to TweetDeck wherein accounts will no longer have the ability to select multiple accounts that would simultaneously tweet, retweet, like, or follow the same tweets or accounts.
According to The Verge, these rules came out after more than 50,000 accounts were tied to a Russian-backed organization, the Internet Research Association (IRA). This organization has been reported to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, wherein almost 70,000 people were exposed to the Russian propaganda.
The aforementioned suspended accounts have violated these spam policies. These accounts have been known to be "tweetdeckers" who steal other people's tweets without crediting them and then mass-retweet one another to inflate their likes and followers.
TweetDeck started as a third-party platform for Twitter users to schedule tweets for their accounts and create groups of profiles. Some Twitter users have reportedly paid administrators of the groups for access, according to a report by Newsweek.
