More than 70 million accounts have been suspended in Twitters latest wave of “cleansing”. Some have described this move as a Twitter Purge.
The social media site had earlier on, in July 2018, announced that follower counts were going to reduce. Twitter cited transparency and accuracy, as the basis for the move, with the goal to make the site a “more trusted service for public conversation.”
According to the statement on the official twitter blog, most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop.
By this, Twitter implied that, bot accounts and suspicious handles that did not go through the scrutiny process, were going to stay locked and inactive.
Is Twitter Curbing Hate Speech And Fake News?
Twitter, with this move, seems to be aiming to curb “hate speech” and “fake news”, which have been at the front burner of social media conversations, since the Donald Trump assumed Presidency.
The major victims of twitter’s latest move, however, seems to, mostly be bot accounts and influencer accounts, with what they term “suspicious activity”.
The bot accounts, are typically being accounts with under 100 followers and with tweets considered to be hateful, suspicious or fake news. Influencers on the other hand, having large followers – a lot of whom may be bot accounts and trolls – also suffered significant losses, some losing millions of followers, while others lost access to their accounts altogether, via suspension.
What Could Make An Influencer Lose His Twitter Account?
Although, Twitter has tried to clarify and explained that, it does not “shadow ban” or censor tweets and accounts, based on political views, however, it is clear that its algorithms make certain political views less visible on the network.
Based on twitter’s new rules and content moderation algorithms, accounts that have one or more of the following issues are very likely to get suspended or locked out:
- Accounts with unverified contact details – email and or phone number
- Accounts that have been reported multiple times by other users
- Accounts with reported copyrighted material that have not been deleted or taken down
- Accounts with a lot of bot activity – that is, tweeting a lot of unsolicited replies and mentions
- Accounts that have been muted and blocked by a lot of users
- Accounts that tweet spammy, suspicious and malicious links
- Accounts with racially charged tweets
- Accounts with scathing gender-biased views, particularly those bordering around misogyny, misandry and anti-feminism
- Accounts with tweets targeted against the LGBT community
Newly created accounts linked to a previously suspended account
What To Do To Recover Your Account
If you have been locked out of your account, suspended or reported, here is what you can do to recover your account:
- Sign into your Twitter account and attempt to verify your email and phone number.
- If successful with step one, you will be prompted to change your password to a more secure password.
- Rectify any issues with your account, such as taking down copyrighted content and deleting reported tweets.
- Do not try to create a new Twitter account, particularly using the same email and phone number associated with a previously suspended or reported account.
What Do These Changes Mean For Everyone Else?
For the average Twitter user, Twitter’s latest purge might leave you largely unaffected, but it is important to comply with Twitter’s recommended guidelines and policies.
Your Twitter Timeline will be a lot less “busy”, have less spammy and suspicious links and also have less racially and gender charged tweets – which should be a good thing for everyone.
This also means that, greater scrutiny is being placed on the tweets shared on Twitter and breaking the rules could get you in trouble.
