Twitter Takes Action against ‘Tweetdeckers’
‘Tweetdecking’, a practice whereby teams of users, usually
teens, team up to force content to go viral on behalf of a paying customer, has
proven to be a highly lucrative endeavour for those orchestrating this manufactured
image of popularity. It is however seen by Twitter and many of its users as a
highly dishonest act which inherently undermines some of the core principles
behind the social network, whilst also exemplifying the widely publicised
phenomenon of the ‘social media echo-chamber’. It is also a direct violation of
Twitter’s spam policy, which explicitly states that users are not allowed to “sell,
purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions.”
Well it seems that Twitter have finally had enough, and decided
to take drastic action against these ‘tweetdeckers’. Counter measures began in
force following a BuzzFeed article which documented the practice and brought it firmly into the public
eye, at which point Twitter implemented changes which prevented these users
from using TweetDeck, a popular sharing app among Tweetdeckers, to retweet from
multiple accounts at once. This substantially hindered their ability to easily
manufacture virality at the touch of a button, but by no means solved the
issue.
On Friday, Twitter unveiled their latest tactic in their
quest to eliminate tweetdeckers from their platform, as they suspended several
popular accounts known for not only forcing tweets to go viral for a fee, but
also stealing content from other people’s tweets, if not the post in its entirety.
Many of these accounts were hugely popular, with follower counts ranging from hundreds
of thousands all the way up into the millions.
To be honest though, I expect these suspensions to have
little if any effect in the long run. The same people will simply create new accounts,
rebuild and continue as before. While creating a new account in order to
circumvent a ban or suspension is in itself a violation of Twitter’s policies,
something tells me these users have little regard for that fact.
A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on
individual accounts when approached by BuzzFeed News.
Sam
is an aspiring novelist with a passion for fantasy and crime thrillers.
Currently working as Editor of Social Songbird, he hopes to one day drop that
'aspiring' prefix. Follow him @Songbird_Sam
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Twitter Takes Action against ‘Tweetdeckers’
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Rating:
Unknown
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