Spam is something we are all familiar with -- the irrelevant or inappropriate set of messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients. Spam emails, spam comments, spam posts -- all of which can be extremely annoying and bog down the experience for users of any platform. With the recent increase of spam and fake news, Twitter in general has been under fire recently due to such problems. Many creators, platforms, and influencers are trying to find ways to circumvent such posts and prevent it from happening in the first place.
In response, Twitter, the famous and extremely popular online news and social networking service, has recently announced an anti-spam policy to block bulk-tweeting and keep the feeds relatively spam-free. CEO Jack Dorsey and his team's overall mission is to reduce spam, specifically the bots employing third-party apps to post it, and "improve the quality and reliability of information shared on the platform."
Twitter is advising on a Twitter Developer Blog written by Yoel Roth the following to developers:
1. Do not post the same content or very similar content across multiple accounts.
2. Do not allow accounts to perform same "engagement" activities (likes, retweets, mentions, etc.) from multiple accounts.
3. Do not use automation tools to post the same content or trigger the mass "engagement" activities across multiple accounts. (exception being applications that share emergency alerts for weather, news, etc.)
4. Take note of changes to TweetDeck's multiple account tools (no longer able to perform actions across many accounts at the same time).
5. Take note of what constitutes "spam" on Twitter (posting redundant content, triggering mass engagement across multiple accounts, posting multiple updates to boost a Trending Topic with intent to "game" the system).Failure to comply with these rules could result in disciplinary actions to be enforced, "up to and including the suspension of associated applications and accounts."
Yoel Roth, API Policy and Product Trust at Twitter, states in his blog post that these changes are an important step towards ensuring they stay ahead of the malicious and ill-intended activities targeting the crucial conversations that take place on Twitter (like elections).
Any questions about any of the developer policies can be asked in the Rules and Policies category in the Developer Forums.
Do you think these new policies is a step in the right direction for spam control, or do you think the platform and its publishers will be negatively affected by the now rule-breaking reliance on third party apps to save time and effort for post simultaneously across multiple accounts?
Comments
Post a Comment