Twitter Reportedly Suspended ‘Tweetdeckers’ for Stealing and Selling Content

The reported violators were suspended for running afoul of Twitter's spam policy.

Image via Twitter
Twitter

Image via Twitter

Image via Twitter

Having already dealt with bots that can possibly help swing elections and a self-imposed inability to ban a president who openly violates their policies, Twitter is now also dealing with a number of users reportedly stealing memes and tweets in attempts to go viral.

“In addition to stealing people’s tweets without credit, some of these accounts are known as 'tweetdeckers' due to their practice of teaming up in exclusive Tweetdeck groups and mass-retweeting one another’s — and paying customers’ — tweets into forced virality,” wrote Julia Reinstein in a recent Buzzfeed News report. “A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on individual accounts, but BuzzFeed News understands the accounts were suspended for violating Twitter's spam policy.”

Users @finah, @holyfag, Common White Girl/@commonwhitegiri, @teenagernotes, @Dory, @GirlPosts, @SoDamnTrue, Girl Code/@reiatabie, and @memeprovider were all reportedly suspended over the weekend for violating Twitter’s spam policy, which is quoted below:

You may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of spamming anyone. Spam is generally defined on Twitter as bulk or aggressive activity that attempts to manipulate or disrupt Twitter or the experience of users on Twitter to drive traffic or attention to unrelated accounts, products, services, or initiatives.

In an extremely meta move, Twitter users poked fun at the suspended accounts with memes and commentary of their own.

Locals trying to figure out what they’re gonna relate to now that Dory, Common & other tweetdeck accounts are suspended pic.twitter.com/FnU6FVJ9V6
just found out that twitter suspended/locked popular tweetdeck accounts like dory, finah, girlposts, scamful, etc. twitter really had enough of their recycled stolen tweets! pic.twitter.com/5aHdTMarn2
the fact that all these tweetdeck accounts getting suspended used twitter as their income and now they're all going to have to look for real jobs before rent is due in a couple weeks pic.twitter.com/bQjL7KT78k

Some users involved in the “Tweetdecking” crackdown were allegedly accepting compensation to amplify tweets. And since Twitter’s spam policy also calls for a suspension or a ban of users who “sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions,” those users were suspended along with those accused of retweeting individual tweets and memes across multiple accounts via standalone apps or scheduling automated retweets.

Latest in Life