Twitter Is Constantly Pruning Spam and Bot Accounts to Combat Platform Manipulation

According to an article on Fast Company, everyone’s favorite 280-character social media platform, Twitter, automatically removes “6 million to 7.5 million accounts per week” in an effort to combat platform manipulation. “That works out to about 10 to 12 accounts a second, or 312 million to 390 million a year,” the article said.

Twitter defines platform manipulation as platform activity which “involves attempts to disrupt the health of the public conversation via malicious automation and spam tactics.” Bots, spam and troll accounts stand in the crosshairs of Twitter’s efforts. According to the Fast Company article, “[...] fake accounts and spam continue to pop up hydra-like across the platform, determined to manipulate Twitter for their own undoubtedly nefarious purposes (read: sell you shady products, influence an election, and/or steal your credit card number).”

In today’s environment of brand ambassadors, content marketing and immediate interconnectivity, questions of who controls and who dominates the conversation in online spaces is of paramount importance to marketers and consumers alike. For brands that may have relied on automated accounts (over those run by in-the-flesh content managers), Twitter’s anti-platform manipulation initiatives may mean that businesses must change their tactics.