Twitter Cracks Down on Tweetdeckers With Mass Account Suspensions

Twitter continues its fight against spam and “tweetdecking” on its platform. On Friday, the social media website suspended a slew of accounts known for stealing and retweeting viral tweets without crediting their original creators.

Twitter has suspended a number of accounts responsible for ‘tweetdecking’ https://t.co/S5hzmEllOm pic.twitter.com/2xoGBVaxej

— The Verge (@verge) March 11, 2018

Included in the suspension are@Dory, @CommonWhit Girl, @memeproviderand a host of other accounts known for stealing jokes and memes from other Twitter users and retweeting them. Twitter had previously suspended some of these accounts individually, but it is the first time that the company suspended them all en masse.

Twitter is NOT playin. Tweetdecking is over 👍
Buh 👋 Bye 👋 https://t.co/yqrkWYMQ7F

— Sweetcher ♡ (@sweetcher62) March 11, 2018

Apparently, stealing other people’s jokes without giving their creators proper credit is just one of the offenses of some of these accounts. According to BuzzFeed, Twitter targeted some of these accountsbecause they are known for “tweetdecking,” a practice where multiple accounts are used in mass-retweeting each other’s posts. The ultimate aim of the practice is to artificially induce these posts to become viral.

At the moment, it is still unclear if Twitter intends to make these suspensions permanent.  What is known, however, is that by engaging in “tweetdecking,” these accounts have violated the company’s policies on spam specifically those that prohibit mass duplication and impersonation. If the social media platform decides to reactivate the suspended accounts, it is likely that repeating their offense will result in more stringent punishments in the future.

Lately, Twitter has come under scrutiny over spamming and fake accounts on its website. Earlier this year, the company released the shocking statistics on its investigations over Russian propaganda campaign via the platform. More than50,000 Twitter accounts were allegedly linked to the Russian governmentand may have been used to influence the 2016 US presidential elections.

Twitter has deleted 60 of my Followers in less than 24hrs…all of them can’t be Russian-bots.

— His Highness (@MajesticBrotha) March 10, 2018

How do you lose almost 200 followers in one night? Thanks Twitter! Don’t tell me they were Russian bots again.

— Dixie4Trump (@DBurton3) March 12, 2018

The bots just don’t stop. @Twitter your platform is infested. #RussianBots pic.twitter.com/ahA2mAVn7N

— Greg Sarafan 🌐⚖🗽Esq. (@GSarafan) March 12, 2018

Under increasing pressure to eliminate spamming, Twitter announced last month that it has anew set of rules on how users and app can automate tweets. Now, third-party platforms such as Tweetdeck can no longer like or send identical tweets from multiple accounts; a move specifically implemented to target “tweetdecking.” The company is also now making greater effort to crack down on the use of bots on its site.

[Featured image via Twitter]