Twitter is trying to crack down on bot-masters that spam from multiple accounts

February 21, 2018

The long and short of it is this: Twitter is prohibiting applications that allow users to post “identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts.” The idea, of course, is to ward off bot accounts that flood Twitter with spam–the kind of behavior that can, oh, negatively impact elections. And with Congressional elections coming up this November, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, are all under intense scrutiny in Washington and elsewhere to try to keep from being exploited by bad actors.

In essence, the new guidelines say that no third-party application should allow users to select multiple accounts and simultaneously send the same tweet. Retweeting is allowed, however, in small doses, as long as it’s not high-volume and automated.

At the same time, Twitter is demanding that third-party applications also not enable simultaneous liking, retweeting, or following–all signature moves by bot accounts. In fact, the company is banning any automated posting of identical tweets or other actions, such as likes or retweets across multiple accounts.

And as part of the new policies, Twitter is disabling features in TweetDeck that allowed users to automatically perform actions across multiple accounts.

Developers have until March 23 to bring their applications into compliance or risk having their Twitter integration suspended.

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