Slashdot Mirror
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.
How are they going to determine similar content?
Any tweet with the phrase "no collusion" is going to be tossed out.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
Cue the droning on of $FAVORED_PARTY saying $UNFAVORED_PARTY crying about $PERCEIVED_SLIGHT.
>> 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!"
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
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.