Twitter has cracked down on the trend of ‘tweetdecking’ this weekend by shutting down a number of hugely popular accounts.
Tweetdecking is the process of selling retweets for money to force tweets to go viral as well as stealing others’ tweets without credit in order to boost follower numbers.
The ‘decks’ references in the name are the groups made up of users with huge followings that come together to sell their social media pull to brands and individuals.
Shocked: Twitter has suspended the accounts of a number of popular users for engaging in ‘tweetdecking’, which involves stealing others’ tweets and selling retweets for cash
Going down: One of the accounts suspended was @girlposts, which had nearly 10 million followers
The practice is most popular with younger users, and for some has proved incredibly lucrative with incomes of thousands of dollars every month.
On Friday, a number of accounts with massive follower counts – some with audiences in the millions – were suspended from the platform for engaging in the practice. Among these handles are @dory, @girlposts, and @ginah.
According to BuzzFeed News, the accounts were officially banned for violating Twitter’s spam policy.
The policy states that users ‘may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of spamming anyone’ and are not permitted to ‘sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions.’
Bit of a change: This user went from 121,000 followers to just 40 on a new account, complete with a cover photo begging for his followers to return
Many of the users took back to the site on new accounts in dismay, expressing their heartbreak and begging for followers to return.
While many Tweetdeckers have suffered suspensions before and were later reinstated, many are pointing to the scope of this mass suspension to be a sign of a turning point on the site.
The news comes soon after Twitter announced a host of new rules to combat spam that went into effect last month.
As a part of these rules, Twitter purged its site of thousands of bot accounts in an effort to crackdown on propaganda and harassment. The move led to a number of conservative Twitter users claiming they were being censored after losing thousands of followers overnight
Big news: The sheer volume of suspensions led some to believe that this is a turning point on the platform
#TwitterLockOut was trending on Twitter as many right-wing pundits, supporters of President Donald Trump and conservative influencers argued they were being targeted by the site.
Twitter confirmed that the activity was a result of a broader crackdown on bot accounts, but that its efforts are ‘apolitical.’
We enforce our rules without political bias,’ a Twitter spokesperson told CNET.
‘As part of our ongoing work in safety, we identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around multiple accounts, or abuse’
Twitter also pointed out that it flags any accounts that appear to be violating the site’s terms of service.