Fake Accounts Suspension Could Hit Twitter Growth

San Francisco: To counter the spread of misinformation on its platform, Twitter is suspending over one million fake and suspicious accounts a day which may further hit its already-stalled users' growth, the media reported.

According to The Washington Post, the rate of account suspensions has more than doubled since October when the micro-blogging platform revealed to US Congress how the Russians used fake accounts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

More than 70 million accounts were suspended in May and June, the report said on Friday.

Twitter currently has nearly 330 million monthly active users (MAUs).

Removing accounts could lead to a drop in the number of MAUs in the second quarter, claimed the report.

A Twitter representative told CNET that its "ongoing information quality efforts", along with other factors, were impacting the number of MAUs.

"MAU may continue to be negatively impacted in future periods due to our ongoing information quality efforts, GDPR, and other operational decisions," the report said quoting Twitter.

The wave of account suspensions by the world's largest social network is one of several recent campaigns by Twitter to police its platform and stop spam and abuse of fake accounts.

The micro-blogging platform said that in May, its systems identified and challenged more than 9.9 million potentially "spammy" or automated accounts per week -- up from 6.4 million in December and 3.2 million in September 2017.

"Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we are now removing 214 per cent more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis," Twitter informed last week.

Twitter saw a drop in the average number of spam reports -- from an average of approximately 25,000 per day in March, to approximately 17,000 per day in May.

"We've also seen a 10 per cent drop in spam reports from search as a result of our recent changes. These decreases in reports received means people are encountering less spam in their timeline, search, and across the Twitter product," the company said.

"We're also moving rapidly to curb spam and abuse originating via Twitter's APIs. In Q1 2018, we suspended more than 142,000 applications in violation of our rules -- collectively responsible for more than 130 million low-quality, spammy tweets," the company said.

Twitter suspends over 70 Milliion fake accounts

Twitter Inc. has suspended more than 70 million fake accounts in May and June in a massive drive to clear out bots and trolls on the platform, the media reported.

The crackdown on suspicious accounts, which came amid mounting political pressure after Congress criticised Twitter for lax regulation on foreign-controlled fake accounts to spread false information that may impact US domestic politics, Xinhua reported on Friday. Twitter sources told The Washington Post that the rate of account suspensions has more than doubled since October as over 1 million accounts were suspended a day in recent months.

The wave of account suspensions by the world's largest social network is one of several recent campaigns by Twitter to police its platform and stop spam and abuse of fake accounts. Last month, Twitter announced "new measures to fight abuse and trolls, new policies on hateful conduct and violent extremism, and (we) are bringing in new technology and staff to fight spam and abuse."

Focusing on improving the health of conversations on Twitter means "ensuring people have access to credible, relevant, and high-quality information on Twitter," Del Harvey, Vice President of Trust and Safety of Twitter, said in an official blog post in June.

Twitter's aggressive measures against unwanted accounts may impact its user base as a fall in the number of monthly users could be expected in the second quarter ending last week, according to the Post report. (IANS)