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Twitter Updates Developer Rules in the Wake of Bot Crackdown (mashable.com)
Twitter is getting serious about its bot problem. From a report: Hours after a massive bot purge that prompted the #TwitterLockOut hashtag to trend, the company is announcing new rules for developers meant to prevent bots from using third-party apps to spread spam. According to the new rules, developers that use Twitter's API will no longer be able to let users: Simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts. Simultaneously perform actions such as Likes, Retweets, or follows from multiple accounts Use of any form of automation (including scheduling) to post identical or substantially similar content, or to perform actions such as Likes or Retweets, across many accounts that have authorized your app (whether or not you created or directly control those accounts) is not permitted.
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
How are they going to determine similar content? There needs to be a process for false positives.
I've never seen an explanation of just exactly how they know a bit from a real person.
Seems to come down to, if they don't like what you post, yer a bot.
>> developers meant to prevent bots from using third-party apps to spread spam
I thought that was the whole point of Twitter: bots posting to other bot's feeds. During my brief time in marketing, that was my general experience anyway: we'd package up some piece of clickbait, link it to an article we planted on Slashdot or similar forum, and then drop it into a bot hopper somewhere to bounce around an extended bot ecosystem, in the hopes that the occasional tweet/link would eventually get posted to a notable news source and increase our SEO midichlorians. As for anyone actually READING Twitter? That's something that only happened when we needed to retune existing bots or build new ones. Long story short, as a human, "I ain't got time for no Twitter!"
Just turn off API access to Twitter.
Don't do anything bot-like.
What a cesspool twitter is.
Looks like APK is semi lucid at the moment with this rant.
It seems like they could have just called and let the handful of people with grandfathered unlimited Twitter API access know this.
Everyone else gets limited Oath keys so they can't support many Twitter users at once anyway, which would seem to limit bot use...
I really doubt bots are coming in through the API, they are coming in via the website by bots pretending to be a browser.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously.
mnem
Pants are highly overrated.
I'm genuinely curious as to whether this decision came from public pressure, social pressure, legal pressure, or the that very minor sense of integrity that says that even if we allow individuals to have more than one voice, they shouldn't be allowed to use all of them at literally the exact same time.
Unless there's a piece of software that can automate the screaming of one particular statement in timed intervals to circumvent these new rules, of course.
This will be interesting. If anyone had multiple accounts and were using it in a way now prohibited by the rules, they will now need to abandon all accounts except 1.
Unless they have some other sauce mixed with this, expect a lot of false positives. Users on several sites like Twitch use Twitter to announce things automatically. When they go live for example. Those tend to be based on fairly static templates.
Capatcha: quaqmire. Giggity :)
Tim
The real news is Jared Taylor suing Twitter because California law specifically protects the freedom of speech in privately owned public spaces.
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
Cue the droning on of $FAVORED_PARTY saying $UNFAVORED_PARTY crying about $PERCEIVED_SLIGHT.
All I know is Gab.ai got a massive bundle of new users in the last day or so.
Does that sound like something bots would do?
I think Twitter has reached the "we don't care about users" stage.
Next up will be the "We see some problems on the horizon" phase, followed by the "we've changed our direction" phase, then the "please come back - we're sorry" phase, then a couple of "we've reorganized and eliminated 10% of our employees" phases.
After that, maybe a year or two from now, we will look back on twitter with the same fondness as AOL and Yahoo.
(For those who didn't already know, Gab.ai is a replacement that promises free speech. Offensive posts are handled at the user's end - you are allowed to mute other people or words that you don't want to see in your feed. This ensures that you won't be offended, while allowing everyone else the right to speak their minds.)
My understanding is that it was not just a bot purge, it was also an ideological purge to a non-trivial degree. Anecdotally, a number of conservative users were locked out, some with no recourse and others allowed back in if they provided additional identifying details like a phone number.
It defies logic to believe the company's reaction to events in the political sphere could in any way be apolitical.
Looks like they're purging the communist propaganda.
If a website operator deliberately makes a public website inaccessible to users with disabilities, it risks a lawsuit from National Federation of the Blind or foreign counterparts.