Twitter Prohibits Automated Following or Bulk Following

Forum Moderators: not2easy & rumbas

Message Too Old, No Replies

Twitter Prohibits Automated Following or Bulk Following

engine

2:17 pm on Jul 4, 2013 (gmt 0)

Twitter has updated its developer guidelines, and one item stood out, "automated following or bulk following is also prohibited."

we relaxed some display requirements around author’s name, timestamps and permalinks; we clarified that the “no commingling” term doesn’t apply to manually curated streams; and, we now require developers to disclose their privacy policies before people download, install or sign up for a service. We have also clarified some restrictions: hosting datasets of raw Tweets for download is prohibited, and automated following or bulk following is also prohibited. Twitter Prohibits Automated Following or Bulk Following [dev.twitter.com]

incrediBILL

10:13 pm on Jul 4, 2013 (gmt 0)

It's about damn time!

I'm sick of mentioning certain topics and suddenly you have "followers" of that keyword within seconds of posting a tweet.

Another kind of spam they need to address is auto-favorites as that's even more subtle in that they don't follow you, they just favorite your tweets on those keywords hoping you'll follow the bread crumbs to whatever crap they're peddling.

carloborja

3:02 am on Jul 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

I've read the comments and it seems like it was not clear how many is considered 'bulk'?

Let's say I personally and manually just followed 100 people in the industry. Would I get banned or something?

Anyway, at least this move will get rid of a lot of those noisy bots on my mentions.

SEOPTI

3:09 am on Jul 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

This way they can provide more accurate data for government agencies. <sarcasm>

Rosalind

12:11 pm on Jul 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

The auto favourites have grown more frequent in my experience, perhaps as other kinds of spam have been cracked down on. There may be a limit to this, but Twitter need to tighten it up.

incrediBILL

6:42 pm on Jul 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

Twitter could give us a few controls to block anyone from favoriting or retweeting if they aren't a follower which would stop the nonsense without making people switch to private accounts.

Dinkar

5:25 am on Jul 7, 2013 (gmt 0)

What is wrong if someone (even if a spammer) favour or retweet your tweet? I don't see any harm.

carloborja

4:23 pm on Jul 7, 2013 (gmt 0)

It matters because you are on Twitter to engage with real people who are of the same interests.

Having a lot of bots on your timeline/mentions would make your end goal kind of irrelevant.

DXL

8:57 pm on Aug 16, 2013 (gmt 0)

Let's say I personally and manually just followed 100 people in the industry. Would I get banned or something?

This type of thing would look unnatural to Twitter. At least if you're talking about following 100 people in the space of two hours. I can't think of any instance in which you would follow 100 people in one day, unless you're reciprocating follows.

lucy24

9:41 pm on Aug 16, 2013 (gmt 0)

Huh. I read an article about "following" just the other day. Claimed that for most users, "follow" is about as meaningful as clicking "like". It doesn't mean you will ever actually read the person's tweets.

:: shuffling papers ::

Short version:
[cracked.com...] (#6, Tweets)

Long version:
[pewinternet.org...]

Disclaimer: I read it yesterday (really), but the study was published in 2010. I'd be surprised if the percentages were any higher today, though.

DXL

10:30 am on Aug 22, 2013 (gmt 0)

Claimed that for most users, "follow" is about as meaningful as clicking "like". It doesn't mean you will ever actually read the person's tweets.

I check out my Twitter feed because I typically share anything interesting that comes up. But for people who reciprocal follow thousands of others, I would imagine most don't spend much time looking at their feed, just clicking the "connect" tab to see who mentioned them.