• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 9, 2019

Continuing to battle spammers and other bad actors, Twitter just dramatically reduced the number of accounts that users can follow per day. Effective immediately, Twitter users can now follow up to 400 accounts per day -- down from 1,000.

“To prevent spam and manipulation of follow relationships and to ensure site reliability, there are technical limits regarding how many Twitter accounts you are able to follow,” Twitter stated.

The company said the limits are based on the rate at which users follow new accounts, as well as how many followers they have.

Verified Twitter accounts will still be able to follow up to 1,000 accounts per day.

In addition to the daily limits, Twitter is putting into place follow ratios, which go into effect once a user begins following a certain number of accounts.

For example, every Twitter account can follow up to 5,000 accounts. Once they reach that number, they might need to wait until their account has more followers before following additional accounts.  “This number is different for each account and is automatically calculated based on your unique ratio of followers to following,” according to Twitter.

More broadly, Twitter Rules forbid what the it considers to be “abusive following.” Violation of these rules may result in account suspensions.

Among other common abuses, the company prohibits “follow churn,” which is when users follow and then unfollow large numbers of accounts in an effort to inflate their own follower count.

Twitter also forbids indiscriminate following, which is when users follow or unfollow large numbers of unrelated accounts in a short time period.

Like Facebook, Twitter is engaged in a war against spammers and manufacturers of fake accounts.  

Last last year, the company expanded its rules to better reflect how it identifies fake accounts and what types of inauthentic activity violates its guidelines.

To determine whether an account is fake or not, factors that Twitter now considers include the use of stock or stolen avatar photos, stolen or copied profile bios, and intentionally misleading profile information, including profile location