Twitter reduces daily follows to combat spammers

In an apparent attempt to weed out spammers dominating its platform, Twitter, popular micro-blogging service, has announced that it will be trimming the number of accounts users can follow in a single day.

Previously, users could follow up to 1,000 accounts in a single day but with this new measure in place, users have been restricted to only 400 follows — which still allows for more following than the average human user is likely to do in a 24 hour period.

The company announced this development on Monday in a tweet that said “Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.”

Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.

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— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 8, 2019

Speaking on the development, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity, said 400 had been chosen as the new limit because it makes spam accounts less effective, slower and more expensive for perpetrators to operate.

Today, we lowered the limit on the number of accounts you can follow per day from 1000 to 400. Some people are wondering why we picked 400. Well, I’m glad you asked. Nerdy thread on rate limits and anti-spam technology 👇… https://t.co/DZTkqo2dqi

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) April 8, 2019

“Today, we lowered the limit on the number of accounts you can follow per day from 1000 to 400. Some people are wondering why we picked 400. Well, I’m glad you asked. Nerdy thread on rate limits and anti-spam technology,” he wrote.

Factors taken into account by Twitter when determining if accounts are being used for spam is following and or unfollowing large numbers of accounts in short time periods.