New Twist To Follow Terms Violations

[Dewald Pretorius]

On Twitter's new site, http://business.twitter.com, under the heading
Best Practices, the following is listed as a spamming practice:

"Following churn: Following and unfollowing the same people
repeatedly, as well as following and unfollowing those who don't
follow back, are both violations of our terms of service."

Take note devs, the "...unfollowing those who don't follow back..."
statement is posing a risk for any of your apps that do bulk unfollow.

On that point, I would like to get clear guidance from Twitter whether
unfollowing someone who has stopped following you, i.e., unfollowed
you first, would also constitute a violation of Twitter terms.

[RandyC]

The way I read the actual text it suggests that following and then
unfollowing in a short period of time is the violation...not that you
can't unfollow someone who didn't follow you. In fact, isn't
following someone who doesn't want to follow you back a form of
stalking for some people? I've always taken it as a given that it's a
courtesy to not continue following someone indefinitely if they're not
following back. There are exceptions of course depending on the
person or topic and how that person is operating their account and
whether they are a public or private entity.

http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

[Andrew Badera]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Vision Jinx <vjn...@gmail.com> wrote:

What?

Re: "as well as following and unfollowing those who don't follow back,

are both violations of our terms of service."

What gives Twitter the right to dictate who you want to follow or not?
That is like Gmail saying you can't remove contacts from your contacts
list. When I signed up it suggested a list of people to follow but I
didn't find the tweets interesting so I un-followed them (they didn't
follow me back, but that was not the reason I un-followed them). I
should have the right to decide who I want to follow or not unless
Twitter is under a communist regime? Is there also a term that if
someone posts a link I have to click it also?

I also followed iGoogle for a while but didn't find the tweets that
interesting so I un-followed them, they never followed me back, so if
Twitter wants to delete my account (for TOS violations) then fine go a
head, do so right now then, but I feel it is my right to decide who I
do and do not want to follow and that will not change. They need to
post a message when you sign up that you are not allowed to un-follow
people. Why is there even that option then?

Regards,
Vision Jinx
@visionjinx
(In case Twitter wants to delete my account for feeling I have the
right to decide who I follow, fine then do it now.) I also, un-
followed someone because they kept posting the same tweets over again
so who's the bigger offender there then?

Wow, ridiculous much?

Those terms are in place to prevent spam-friendly follow-bot whores from ruining the ecosystem for all of us.

If anything about the spirit or intention of those terms is disagreeable to you, I'm going to go ahead and label you an inconsiderate spammer.

Thanks-
- Andy Badera
- and...@badera.us
- Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+badera
- This email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

[Dale Merritt]

you knew that was going to happen.  How about bulk follows, if that its done in a thoughtful way?

--
Dale Merritt
Fol.la MeDia, LLC

[Joshua Perry]

Think about a bot who just bulk follows random people, it then would
kept track of users who didn't blindly or automatically follow back and
dump them quickly and try following another batch of users so that it
wouldn't bust it's follow ratio limit. Using this strategy a bot could
eventually build a very large following/followers list for someone while
still keeping it's ratio within the boundaries set.

I believe that the second part of that term is to protect against this
scenario.

Vision Jinx wrote:
> What?
>
> Re: "as well as following and unfollowing those who don't follow back,

> are both violations of our terms of service."
>

> What gives Twitter the right to dictate who you want to follow or not?
> That is like Gmail saying you can't remove contacts from your contacts
> list. When I signed up it suggested a list of people to follow but I
> didn't find the tweets interesting so I un-followed them (they didn't
> follow me back, but that was not the reason I un-followed them). I
> should have the right to decide who I want to follow or not unless
> Twitter is under a communist regime? Is there also a term that if
> someone posts a link I have to click it also?
>
> I also followed iGoogle for a while but didn't find the tweets that
> interesting so I un-followed them, they never followed me back, so if
> Twitter wants to delete my account (for TOS violations) then fine go a
> head, do so right now then, but I feel it is my right to decide who I
> do and do not want to follow and that will not change. They need to
> post a message when you sign up that you are not allowed to un-follow
> people. Why is there even that option then?
>
> Regards,
> Vision Jinx
> @visionjinx
> (In case Twitter wants to delete my account for feeling I have the
> right to decide who I follow, fine then do it now.) I also, un-
> followed someone because they kept posting the same tweets over again
> so who's the bigger offender there then?
>
>

> On Jul 24, 10:22 am, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Twitter's new site,http://business.twitter.com, under the heading

[David Fisher]

"What gives Twitter the right to dictate who you want to follow or
not?"

Its their service. They can dictate what they want. Their playground,
their rules. The ToS clearly says they can alter their terms at any
time and if you don't want to comply you can leave.

That being said, this is to prevent people who are massively following
and unfollowing (as I see happen dozens of times daily on my account).
You aren't going to get banned for not following someone back, or for
unfollowing someone that bothers you.

dave

[Dewald Pretorius]

Re: "as well as following and unfollowing those who don't follow back"

I think we all know what Twitter means with this. They are protecting
against the practice of building a follower list by following a bunch
of people, waiting to see who follows back, then bulk unfollow those
who did not follow back, to make "room" so that you can follow more,
and repeat the process.

All I wanted to say with my original post, was that apps that do bulk
unfollow are at risk or are putting their users' Twitter accounts at
risk, because they are enabling those Twitter accounts to do
"following churn". At the very least you need to warn your users that
such action is putting their accounts at risk.

And Twitter should add this to their Twitter Rules so that more users
can become aware of it. There are "gurus" out there who are charging
ignorant folks for ebooks and advice that teach them to do exactly
this, namely following churn. And those folks don't know better
because right now those rules (terms) are not very clearly spelled out
in the place where most people would look for them.

[TFT Media]

The originating post is total speculation.

If you think that bulk unfollowing is the sole culprit to suspensions,
then you're not following Twitter closely enough. It takes two to
tango. In this case, churn can correctly be described as the process
of blind bulk/auto following and blind bulk/auto unfollowing.

That bulk/auto following has a distinct hard-limit in the follow limit
should not lead you to believe that you can willy-nilly follow up to
that limit, or that unfollowing is somehow the culprit in any
suspensions.

Indeed: compare these two scenarios: "return follow" applications that
blindly return follow any user who follows them (be they spammer or
legitimate), versus applications that weed out (and unfollow) spammers
who tweet specific words that that user has indicated he finds
offensive (or spam). Clearly, the former is more "churning" than the
latter.

That said, much like the original post, this is also speculation.

On Jul 25, 6:50 am, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Re: "as well as following and unfollowing those who don't follow back"
>
> I think we all know what Twitter means with this. They are protecting

> against the practice of building afollowerlist by following a bunch

> of people, waiting to see who follows back, then bulk unfollow those
> who did not follow back, to make "room" so that you can follow more,
> and repeat the process.
>
> All I wanted to say with my original post, was that apps that do bulk
> unfollow are at risk or are putting their users' Twitter accounts at
> risk, because they are enabling those Twitter accounts to do

> "followingchurn". At the very least you need to warn your users that

> such action is putting their accounts at risk.
>
> And Twitter should add this to their Twitter Rules so that more users
> can become aware of it. There are "gurus" out there who are charging
> ignorant folks for ebooks and advice that teach them to do exactly

> this, namely followingchurn. And those folks don't know better