Twitter Zapping Business Accounts?

16 Years Ago slfisher 1 303 Views

A New Zealand company is that its Twitter account has been suspended due to “Updates consisting mainly of links, and not personal updates" -- which, if true, means that any other business that posts a lot of links could suffer the same fate.

"I suspect the Reuters account http://twitter.com/reuters will be suspended very soon as clearly 99% of their posts are links back to their site," noted the social media marketing company, Business Blogs, tongue-in-cheek, in describing the situation. "Of course its not just Reuters – all profiles controlled by news agencies should be suspended as well."

The company found that its account had been suspended on July 15. "The Twitter profile took our staff over 6 months to build up to a 5,000 follower count by updating the profile with content at least 3 times per day," the company . "There was no selling, no spam and no abuse."

What the company did do -- like many other companies -- was to use a third-party social media company, , to automate the posting of items to sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as to hold and promotions. And in response to Twitter spammers that make a business out of promising to build up one's Twitter following, the company has been cracking down on automated postings.

"Automated or mass-created affiliate advertising is not permitted on Twitter," Twitter writes . "Your tweets may be sponsored by a third-party if you manually post or approve each sponsored tweet before it is posted. These updates may not be automated or scheduled in advance."

It is possible that Business Blogs violated some aspect of these rules. However, if that's the case, and Twitter is cracking down in general, many more businesses could find themselves Tweetless.

Dani AI

Generated 9 Months Ago

This thread documents a classic risk for business accounts: an automated or link‑heavy posting pattern can look like spam or coordinated amplification, and platforms will remove accounts that violate their spam/ manipulation rules or push deceptive links. ’s report and ’s later note that a suspended account was restored illustrate both sides — enforcement happens, but legitimate accounts can sometimes be reinstated. (help.x.com)

Practical prevention (what to change in your workflow): never let automation be a pure feed‑dump. Add unique commentary to each link, vary message copy and timing, avoid posting identical content from multiple accounts, and don’t buy followers or use “engagement farms.” If you use third‑party tools, choose ones that use X’s official API/OAuth, honour rate limits, and require explicit user approval for actions taken on an account. For any programmatic posting at scale, follow X’s developer and automation rules and disclose bot accounts where required. (developer.x.com)

If an account gets suspended: log in and follow any on‑screen verification prompts (email/phone); immediately audit and revoke suspicious third‑party app access; rotate passwords and enable two‑factor authentication; then file an appeal through X’s account‑access form and give a concise timeline of what happened and which tool posted what. Preserve timestamps, approval records, and examples of posts — that information shortens investigations and helps appeals. (help.x.com)

Reality check: platform operators run large bot/spam sweeps and sometimes catch legitimate accounts in the net, so prevention is the cheapest insurance. As put it, distribution is different from generation — focus on original engagement, not just distributing links, to reduce risk and avoid repeating the cycle of suspension → appeal → audit. (techcrunch.com)

bill costley 0 Newbie Poster

16 Years Ago

It's becoming PR Web, revisited.

slfisher 0 Posting Whiz

16 Years Ago

In what way?

bill costley 0 Newbie Poster

16 Years Ago

It distributes, not generates.

MagicVoice 0 Newbie Poster

16 Years Ago

It distributes, not generates.

You mean, the medium is not the message?

goodtaste 0 Junior Poster

13 Years Ago

That has happened to me twice this year, but it has always been restored. Hum, that is very interesting! Did not understand what was happening till now!

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