Hey, Twitter! What gives?
I create Twitter accounts for various clients and brands that I am developing (such as DN PlayBook). I prefer Twitter over Facebook for many things, especially business. However, lately after creating a new account on Twitter and going through all the steps, shortly thereafter I get this message:
What are these supposed violations?
I signed up using a real email address, not a free one like gmail. I confirm that real email (that has the username in the domain name for that email address, by the way). Then select my interests and people I want to follow. That’s it! What’s the unusual behavior? Once I confirm using my phone, the account is opened quickly:
This has not happened just once, but every single time now. And I get it that Twitter is suspicious when multiple accounts are created from the same IP location. But the algorithm should be smart enough to figure out who is creating legitimate accounts vs those that potentially violate the “Twitter Rules”. These would include motives like name squatting or to prevent others from using the name for legitimate purposes, etc. Here is what the algorithm should be looking at, among other things:
- Has this IP been used to create multiple accounts with little or no tweets? This would indicate suspicious activity. I’ve seen loads of Twitter accounts with 0, z-e-r-o, tweets and have been created years ago. 🙁 Twitter should purge those accounts that obviously haven’t been used in years.
- And if there are tweets in those accounts, what kind of behavior do they exhibit? Are they automated? Is the wording similar in multiple accounts, etc? Again, suspicious.
- Check new accounts against others created from the same IP. Are these used for business or personal tweets? If so, this is clear legitimate usage and new accounts from the same IP should be trusted unless the activity changes as per points 1 and 2.
- Are there any complaints from trademark holders or legitimate users that want a particular name that is clearly being used in bad faith by the current account holder? If so, Twitter should respond to such complaints quickly and any new accounts be flagged for possible rules violation.
There are other criteria that an algorithm can distinguish between legitimate new account and a possible violator. I get that Twitter would want to confirm real users vs bots. And smart bots can use multiple different IPs from different locations to create fake accounts. But if the IP (and I assume it goes by IP) usage data does not have a history of any abuse or complaints and existing accounts are confirmed to be legitimate users, then put up a different message that’s less intrusive and doesn’t make one feel like you are automatically labeled as a potential spammer or some other online low-life. Just sayin’.