Twitter Is Taking Steps to Reduce the Effectiveness of Bots

Starting March 23, simultaneous tweets, retweets, likes and follows are taboo

Developers of bots that enable simultaneous tweets, retweets, likes or follows will have to go back to the drawing board before March 23.

Twitter announced last month that it would be “limiting the ability of users to perform coordinated actions across multiple accounts in TweetDeck and via the Twitter API [application-programming interface],” and Yoel Roth, who works on API policy and product trust for the social network, provided more details in a blog post.

With the exception of apps “that broadcast or share weather, emergency or other public-service announcements of broad community interest (for example, earthquake or tsunami alerts), apps using Twitter’s API must comply with the following rules by March 23 or face “enforcement action, up to and including the suspension of associated apps and accounts”:

  • Do not allow users to simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts, or to schedule such posts.
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