To Address Spammers, Twitter Now Allows You To Follow 400 Accounts A Day Instead Of 1,000

In its latest attempt to kick spammer off its network, Twitter has cut down on the number of accounts a user can follow per day from 1,000 to 400. The idea here is to help prevent spammers from quickly widening their networks by following then unfollowing different Twitter accounts aggressively and indiscriminately, which violates Twitter Rules.

The company has also banned a number of services from its API over the same violation.

A number of companies offered tools to help their customers follow a lot of users without spending much effort. This method has been used a lot since people tend to follow back just to be polite while not knowing they are following a bot. There are also tools for mass unfollowing Twitter accounts that don’t follow back.

Earlier 2019, Twitter suspended a number of apps because they violated its following and unfollowing rules. However, that move could only affect those aiming at making profits by offering the spammy automation service.

To actually address spammers, Twitter needs to impose the limits on the number of people one can follow at the API level.

Nevertheless, some still think that Twitter can do more than this.

Several wondered why Twitter chose the number 400 while a regular user wouldn’t need to follow that many in a day. Some users even claim that it may take them years to reach the point where they follow hundreds of people. The company, on the other hand, has used a case for following 400 popular is debatable since DMs can be exposed and firms can send customers to their inbox by tweeting a special URL, then go on with a conversation. By this way, they don’t need following or unfollowing.

Even though smaller businesses are likely to keep using mass following techniques for attracting customers, this move will at least restrict those efforts.

The company explained why it choose the number 400, saying that it looked at users' follow behavior at different thresholds, coming up with 400 as an appropriate limit to stop most spam while having no impacts on legitimate users. They also mentioned a longer thread on Twitter on the topic from Yoel Roth, the Head of Site Integrity.

In recent months, the platform also took other actions to address the spam issue. A new update lets users report spams, Twitter also released new security solutions relating to account sign-up and verification, and so on. These little changes come together as a way to make spamming on Twitter harder and more difficult to spread. And while the number of its monthly users may decrease, the company is betting on the long-term health of its platform.