by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : Twitter has announced it will remove locked accounts — which are disabled owing to suspicious activity — from follower counts across profiles globally in the coming days resulting in some users seeing a drop in their base of followers.
If you lose some followers, do not fret as most people will see a change of four followers or fewer.
But if you are a celebrity or a public figure, you are set to lose more followers with this exercise.
“Others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop. We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Head, said in a blog post late on Wednesday.
The locked accounts are different from spam or bots and in most cases, these accounts were created by real people.
Twitter spots such accounts once there is a sudden changes in account behaviour — including tweeting a large volume of unsolicited replies or mentions, tweeting misleading links, or if a large number of accounts block the account after mentioning them.
“We sometimes lock an account if we see email and password combinations from other services posted online and believe that information could put the security of an account at risk — so we require accounts to change their passwords for protection,” Gadde mentioned.
“Until we confirm that everything is ok with the account, we lock it, which makes them unable to Tweet or see ads,” he added.
Twitter said your follower counts may continue to change more regularly as part of its ongoing work to proactively identify and challenge problematic accounts.
The new announcement came after The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Twitter has been suspending as many as one million questionable accounts per day in recent months and the move will lead to decline in the numbers of its monthly active users.
Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July.
In a tweet, Twitter CFO Ned Segal refuted the report, saying it will not affect the number of Twitter’s users which currently stands at 330 million.
“Some clarifications: most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted,” Segal said.
“If we removed 70 million accounts from our reported metrics, you would hear directly from us. Look forward to talking more on our earnings call July 27!” Segal said in another tweet.
But the confirmation of removal of fake accounts, even if not from the reported metrics, resulted in Twitter’s shares falling nearly nine per cent, erasing $3.1 billion in market value earlier this week.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : While confirming a The Washington Post report that Twitter has been suspending as much as one million questionable accounts per day in recent months, the microblogging site refuted the claim that the move will lead to decline in the numbers of monthly active users.
Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, The Washington Post reported.
“Some clarifications: most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted,” Twitter CFO Ned Segal said in a tweet on Monday while responding to the report in The Washington Post.
Twitter reported 336 million monthly active users at the end of the first quarter of this year.
“If we removed 70 million accounts from our reported metrics, you would hear directly from us. This article reflects us getting better at improving the health of the service. Look forward to talking more on our earnings call July 27!” Segal said in another tweet.
But the confirmation of removal of fake accounts, even if not from the reported metrics, Twitter’s shares fell nearly 9 per cent in midday trading Monday, erasing $3.1 billion in market value, Fortune.com reported.
According to the report in The Washington Post on July 6, the rate of account suspensions at Twitter 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.
Removing accounts could lead to a drop in the number of monthly active users (MAUs) in the second quarter, claimed the report.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology, World
Washington : 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.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Twitter has announced that it will put more live news events in your timeline and notifications and might also send users customised push notification if an event is happening that they may be interested in.
“We’ve been working to change how you discover all the information around news, events, and stories. It’ll be easier to find and follow the big events and stories you care about in your timeline, notifications and Explore,” Twitter said in a blog post on Thursday.
Twitter is now experimenting with topic tabs in its “Explore” tab so that it will be easier to see what’s happening in news and entertainment and what’s most relevant to you.
“Starting today, at the top of search results, you’ll see related news, events, or stories and be able to tap in to get a recap and see the latest discussion, videos or scores,” it added.
At the top of your timeline, users will now see the news that’s relevant to them along with the surrounding tweets and videos.
The new features will be available in the coming months to everyone in the US on iOS and Android.
“We’re also experimenting with sending notifications to you based on your interests (like who you follow and what you Tweet about), so you won’t miss a beat,” Twitter noted.
You can always turn off these notifications by going to your recommendations settings and toggling to not see the news.
For its “Moments” feature that was launched in 2015 as a way to discover and learn about what’s new, Twitter is introducing a new vertical timeline experience.
“Some Moments” including Moments outside of the US, Sponsored Moments, and Moments created by you “will temporarily continue to be horizontal as we roll out this change”, Twitter said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, News, Online Marketing, Politics, Social Media
New Delhi : The micro-blogging platform registered over 30 lakh tweets related to Karnataka assembly polls in the past three weeks, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) garnering 51 per cent of the share of voice, Twitter announced on Wednesday.
Congress registered 42 per cent and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) seven per cent of mentions on Twitter in the April 25-May 15 period.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerged as the most mentioned personality on Twitter, while former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was the most mentioned candidate on Twitter, the company said in a statement.
“Over the past few weeks, our data shows more than three million Tweets related to the Karnataka elections, making it one of the most talked-about state elections on Twitter,” said Mahima Kaul, Head of Public Policy and Government, Twitter India.
#KarnatakaVerdict emerged as the most talked about election-related topic in the past 24 hours since Tuesday.
The most used hashtag across the election was #KarnatakaElections2018.
“Twitter is where political conversations happen and where you can see all sides of a conversation when it comes to elections,” Kaul added.
To make people aware about the importance of elections prior to Karnataka polls, Twitter had released an elections voting emoji and organised a special event called #ElectionsOnTwitter in partnership with civil society organisations and media partners.
—IANS
