I am unable to Tweet or Retweet because I "followed too many people too quickly and I might be a bot". Which is absurd. I followed approximately 38 people in about 4 minutes before I was cut off and no longer to do anything except "like" stuff. Is there a time frame when I can actually tweet, follow, update my bio or retweet again? I am NEW to twitter (about a month or so) and am just locating new Berners to follow. So...I'm lost here. Totally freaking lost.
DDMiller
I must add, that I verified with Twitter that my account was NOT suspended or revoked, but they wouldn't give me any other information. I'm having this problem on Mobile & Laptop. Can't do anything ... and yes, great article. I'm glad I found it before I made an unforgivable mistake. Lol
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Oh dear, that is so annoying. Twitter have hard limits (as stated in this article) and flexible "soft" limits which are determined by algorithms they have running in the background. It sounds like you got caught by one of these. Obviously it was being over-zealous and thought you were a bot! I mean how dare you follow 38 people in 4 minutes! ;-) That is silly. Many people follow more than that on a daily basis and never have any issues. The other thing I would say is that there are lower follow limits in every hour (or possibly in every 15 min period) so don't follow all at once. It is best to do it in batches - follow some now, and then wait for an hour or so. Hope you get sorted. Ian
Hi Ian, thanks for posting very informative article. You have well described different types of limits of Twitter. Some times I am not getting a notification from my followers when they are re-tweet my tweet or they liked my tweet. Another question is, there is any limit for following people per day?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
The upper limit you can follow per day is 1,000 - but you'd never actually want to do this. There are also smaller limits for each hour of the day so, you can't just follow lots all in one go. You should receive notifications from your followers, but you may not receive email notifications for all of these. Twitter tries to send cut down on the number of emails it sends and so won't send you all notifications if you get a lot. There are work arounds to this using other tools, but it's a bit more complicated.
Very informative article. Just a quick one - We have around 12k followers and I want to send a personalised DM inviting them to support our campaign. Is it safe to use a twitter merge google doc? How many DMs will I be able to send in a day, is it a 1000? Does twitter penalize for mass DMs? I don't want my company account to be suspended... :(
Any inputs would be highly appreciated... Rajni
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Rajni, thanks for your comment and apologies for being slow in replying. I've just got back from a conference. You may not want me to say this, but I really advise against sending automated DMs - even if they are personalised. Evidence shows that your unfollow rate could increase by up to 235% if you send automated DMs. My inbox is awash with auto-DMs and it is pretty much unusable. Although I don't unfollow people who send them, I know many people that do. Just be careful! As for whether Twitter will suspend you, that's a difficult question. Twitter give a limit of 250 direct messages per day. That's the max limit, but they may well have lower limits per 15 minute window. For example they may suspend you if you send a certain number in just one hour. If you're going to send multiple direct messages, space out the sending throughout the day- and I'd recommend sending out quite a bit fewer than 250. If you are using an app to do this, hopefully they will allow you to schedule it. You could also build your own app with the Twitter API and have more control over it. Hope that helps.
Thank you! This was very informative as I am looking at building my Twitter account. I really appreciate the in-depth analysis of how Twitter monitors these things, and how they can impact my account.
NNavas
Does not get notifications for my followers if i do like or rt or mention in my twitter, this happen with my all followers, iam sure they did not blocked me,
I have been following 1,000 and unfollowing750 per day with mangeflitter for 4 months with abt 30k followers now. NO problems or warnings from Twitter. I follow for 7ndays before unfollowing.
Is there a limit on the number of contacts that twitter can process when attempting a contact upload? I just established a new twitter account for the program that I manage, and I've tried everything I can think of to import the contacts from my work gmail (there are about 15,000 contacts) to look for folks to follow (I created a non-organizational gmail and imported the contacts... I created a yahoo email... I tried every web browser on my computer), and no matter what I do I get an error message when trying to import the contacts into Twitter. But if I try to use my personal gmail, which has more like 3,000 contacts, it works just fine.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Tim, how annoying! I wish I knew, but Twitter don't publish limits on this. I'm pretty sure they will have limits though- and 15,000 sounds like a lot of contacts for them to deal with. The only work around is trying to do it in batches- just by creating 5 GMail accounts each with 3,000 contacts and adding them that way. A real pain, but I can't think of another solution. Ian
GGregg
My account shows 107 likes in the top bar but none in the tab. Can't figure out why and would like to delete all my likes. Is this possible?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
So when you look at your Twitter likes you can't see them? That's odd. You should be able to click on the "Likes" tab in your Twitter profile and view all your likes there- and then delete them all - one by one. If you've only liked 107 Tweets that's not a massive amount of work. I'm not sure if there are any apps that do this automatically or in bulk for you. Ian
GGregg
Is there a limit to the number of tweets I can like on an individual account? How do I get rid of liked tweets because not all showmup when I open the tab?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Great question, unfortunately as far as I know, Twitter don't publish any limits on the number of likes. I think there will be a hard limit, but I don't know what that will be. It may be a flexible limit depending on your activity. Ian
JJem
Are my tweets also deleted in my friends' account if his/her twitter account was suspended ? For example I tweeted him/her 50 times, then if his/her account was suspended, would my 50 tweets on him/her also be deleted automatically and cannot be seen in my account ? waiting for your response . Thank you :)
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Jem. No, your tweets will still remain including ones where you mentioned your friend. If their account has been suspended then clicking on their screen name in your Tweets will link through their profile which will say that the account in question has been suspended. Ian
ANAspirant Nine
What do you think Is it ok to tag unknown people and organizations in an irrelevant photo ? Because I guess I was attempting to do it here.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
I suppose I would ask what your thinking was. I think too many people abuse photo tagging in Twitter. It can be used wisely- but you need to be careful. It could just annoy people and you might find yourself getting blocked.
Ian
RRandom
Is there any limit on blocking?. I got too many fake followers so I'm trying block them all. Just want to know if there is any limit on the blocking.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Really good question. I just wish I had a good answer for you. From what I know there are no published limits on the number of blocks. My feeling is to spread the load over a few days, but I've blocked several hundred over an hour. I do remember getting a message to say I couldn't block any more- so Twitter will notify you. I also run an automated script on another account to automatically block accounts who spam mention me. I've never had any issues with that.
how many times can we post the same repeating pictures until it spam????
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Norch. Can you be more specific? Do you mean tweet the same image out multiple times? Twitter don't publish any limits for this, but you are likely to have your account flagged as spam by other users if you post the same content lots of times in a row. Twitter also have systems in place to monitor usage and if they spot the same Tweet being posted out or the same image it'll likely flag you. Ian
If there are limits how do certain people get around it? Like Kanye West (or any celebrity), the rich and the famous who have millions of followers? What about someone who wants to utilize Twitter to BECOME famous? And why does Twitter dump your followers even when you aren't violating their rules? At one point I had over 900 followers, then I loofged in and only had 16 - what is that all about?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Some people buy followers. I can't speak for any celeb in particular, but there are plenty of cases of celebs buying followers from the likes of Fiverr.com. These accounts are usually inactive or even spam accounts and are just bought to make the celeb look good. It goes against Twitter's terms of service and you're not going to get any engagement from them. It is something to be avoided. The best way to grow your number of followers is to make sure you are providing value and you follow people who are likely to follow you back. Did Twitter remove legitimate followers from your account? What happened?
Ttazyeen
Hi I am not able to tweet, follow, DM, favorite and my tweets are not visible to others when searched on twitter. Though others are able to follow me, mention me and DM me. When i try to tweet i am getting the following message: "This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later." Please help me to bring my twitter account to normal.
Thanks
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Sorry I didn't get to reply until now. Is this still the case for you? It sounds like your Twitter account has been suspended. It's best to contact Twitter to ask about this. For more information check here - https://support.twitter.com/articles/15790 Ian
SShobhit
Hi I am trying to import my gmail contact on twitter.231 people are present on twitter but when i click on follow all it gives me the following message. There was an error following your contacts. and when i go to home i can see myself following 100 people. In my knowledge i can follow upto 2000 people but why it it throwing this error.
I have always had this same problem, I have never been able to use the "follow all" after importing contacts, it has never worked unled I go through the contacts one by one and select smaller groups of people to follow at a time. It's immensely time consuming and irritating, especially if you're using Twitter for work and just trying to build a follower base for you organization and care less about who exactly you're following.
FAFira Atiqah
Hi. My tweets cannot be seen in other people's mentions. why is that so? it happened on sunday night but came back to normal on monday but the problem occured again and people can only see my tweets to them in their mentions only after 24 hours. now the problem is still on going. help!
Did you post something repeating and repeating? If so your problem just like you're spamming. but idk the solution of this problem you might just need to look it up.
Why I can not delete my tweets? I've deleted them up to 3K... And I would like to delete more... After that, I cannot view the rest remainder of my super super years of tweets. Why? Waiting for the reply.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Twitter did have a limit of viewing your previous 3200 tweets. However they should have extended this. Is this not the case for you? You certainly should be able to view and delete them. Have you tried to download your archive? Twitter allow you to download all your Tweets as an offline copy. That might allow you to get the links to the Tweets and be able to delete the ones you want to delete.
Ian
Jjames
Can we create more than two accounts with different google email accounts? I tried doing so but it keep asking for my number.. how do i skip from giving my number. Please advice. Thanks!!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
That's a really good question, James. I am surprised you are being asked to give a number. I manage over 40 Twitter accounts and I've not experienced this. Have you verified your email address for the 2nd account? One tip is to use the same GMail account by adding extra characters before the @ symbol with a + at the start. So, if your GMail address is example@gmail.com you could give the first Twitter account the email address example+twitter1@gmail.com and the 2nd one example+twitter2@gmail.com. GMail ignores anything after the + and before the @. Hope that makes sense!
BBern
Ian lately I am getting error messages about DMs and cannot find any information whatsoever on this. We have a group DM of 4 people going, sharing links and photos as we don't want it shared with everyone. After awhile it will cut me off from posting photos, even links and just lets me type messages. Any idea what this is? Thanks in advance. To solve the problem we have been deleting and starting a new DM thinking that it may be the size of the combined content. It's only happened to two of us, the error message.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
That's odd. Unfortunately I don't know the answer. It sounds like it's one of those mysterious limits that Twitter don't talk about. It's probably a limit set by an algorithm. Sorry I can't help any further. Ian
BBernadette
I appreciate your time, though, thank you! A Twitter oddity for certain!
YYasmin
Great article Ian, however, my experience with Twitter has been somewhat different.
My account is small (~ 93 followers, following about 139). However, whenever I attempt to follow back more than 4-5 people who have followed me Twitter blocks my account for 'suspicious behaviour'. I then have to go through the tedious process of unblocking my account for behaviour that I don't believe should be suspicious given the amount of activity.
This seems inconsistent with Twitter's stated policies. Do you think my situation is an anomaly? I'd appreciate your thoughts!
Thanks, Yasmin
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Yasmin, Thanks for your comment. Twitter have automated algorithms to spot "suspicious" behaviour. I've had one account in the past temporarily suspended and managed to get this resolved. Is your account being suspended each time? Have you connected with any 3rd party apps which are compromising your account? Check your Twitter settings. Also, does this happen only one internet connection? Do you share this with other people? I know Twitter log IPs. Ian
YYasmin
Hi Ian, Thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I've been cautious about following back and tend to follow back two or three accounts at a time which isn't an issue since my account is relatively small at the moment. Since I've started doing that I haven't had any issues but I don't always have time to go back and follow ... and it's more efficient to just follow back everyone at one time (not that I have a lot of followers right now but you know what I mean) :) The third party apps attached to my account are feedly, hootsuite, TweetChat (by oneQube), Twitter for Android, TweetDeck and Buffer. I only follow back on my laptop so its the same internet connection and IP address. I'm the only person accessing this account. I'll appreciate any advice/guidance you can provide! Thank you! Yasmin
MJMark Joseph
I have a similar problem. I apparently followed too many too quickly during my campaign to help end the dolphin massacres in Taiji Japan and now get the message: "You are unable to follow more people at this time" whenever I attempt to follow someone. The problem started about 20 hours ago. What is the process I need to follow (no pun intended) to fix this? Do I do something to fix it or does the problem last for a set amount of time and clear up on it's own? Thank you in advance.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Mark. How frustrating. Has this been resolved yet? The automated Twitter systems have flagged your account as following too many people. The problem is, that this was automated and sometimes these get things wrong. Hopefully, your account is back to normal. If not, you'll need to contact Twitter support. Unfortunately, they're not good at responding. I wish I had some better help! Ian
AArt
Is there a limit on how many people you can block? And if there is, and you exceed the limit, does it unblock your oldest blocked user?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Unfortunately, the honest answer is, I don't know, but I am very confident in saying there is no limit in the same way there is no limit to how many people can follow you on Twitter. There might be variable limits on how many people you can block at one time, but since Twitter now allow you to export and import block lists I'm not entirely confident on that. In any case, Twitter won't unblock a user unless you unblock them yourself.
TTim
Great page Ian!
For nearly a year I've been following 500 per day on Twitter using ManageFlitter and also unfollowing anywhere between 200-400 who haven't followed back. As I write, I have about 78.5k followers and I'm following about 77k.
Suddenly ManageFlitter is telling me that 250 new follows per day are being blocked, so I'm only being allowed 250 per day instead of 500 (although I know it should be 1000, but not unless you did it exactly every 24 hours). This has happened for over a week now, everyday.
Other than that, my account is working normally. The only thing I can see that may have changed is that my follower to followers count was closer. It would have been within a few hundred but has slowly stretched out to 1.5k which seemed like a natural progression to me. I'm wondering if for instance when the gap hit 1000, did it trigger a lower limit from Twitter? Any thoughts appreciated!
QWQ Willis
I'm sure Ian will answer with more info. But I want stI point out that while you are waiting, there's a comment and conversation on this post from back in 2012 or 2013. This issue was addressed back then. You might be getting blocked because you aren't actually supposed to be doing that. It's "frowned upon" to do bulk following/unfollowing for the purpose of getting followers. My guess would be they noticed what you are doing and are trying to discourage it. Clearly it's worked well for you, but maybe look for other ways? I won't follow people who do that, and if other people feel like I do, you might be losing some important followers to it. Good luck though. Twitter is an interesting little place!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Twitter certainly mention the "aggressive follower churn" technique and this is prohibited in their terms and conditions. This is the method to follow a large number of people and then very quickly unfollow them if they don't follow you back. I think the key word here is aggressive. Twitter don't want you to game the system. For me, I am looking for relevant people to follow and engage with. I sometimes will follow hundreds of people in one go, sometimes far less. I certainly don't do this every day. I then keep following them for a month and see if we have things in common, if we engage and if I like their content. If I really like their content, I add them to one of my Twitter lists and to ManageFlitter's "never unfollow" list. That way, I'll never unfollow them. Every so often, I will do a search on ManageFlitter for people who haven't followed me back and aren't included in my "Never Unfollow" list and for whom I followed over 30 days ago. I'll then go through and selectively unfollow them. I hope that makes sense. I think the slow organic approach is best.
I was banned from Twitter in my first two days, back earlier this year. I saw so many people following then unfollowing, and I got blocked after two days of doing it myself. I got a stern message from Twitter - I want to say it was via email, but it may have been a pop up of some sort. I don't believe I was being aggressive, I certainly wasn't even doing as little as the guy above me is doing. The warning made me think I was going to be banned, so I'm very very careful now. I try to only follow relevant people, and I look over their feed before deciding. That helps avoid the weird accounts that seem real but post nothing but spam. I know it sounds like I have a ton of trouble, and at first I definitely got everything wrong. But the warnings have pretty much disappeared as I've learned to use Twitter delicately. Thank goodness.
I really don't like follower churning, aggressive or otherwise. I keep an eye on the people that do it to me, and I make sure not to follow them for any reason. I check the list every few days in crowdfire, and I seem to have a decent memory for names/profile photos. For me, it seems so dishonest to constantly follow/unfollow. It makes someone think I am interested in them, when all I really care about is numbers. Perhaps that means I'm taking Twitter too personally, but my reputation means a lot to me, and I don't want to do anything that makes me look bad. I can understand what you are doing - you are following people for a purpose, not harassing everyone you can find. That wouldn't stop me from following you. But I don't want to interact with people who don't have any interest in art, so I don't indiscriminately follow. People like you, though, are clear exceptions to my personal rules. If someone has a blog, a business, an account etc that I find interesting, of course I follow even if it isn't related to art. But overall, while I use Twitter for promotion, I also want to make sure my feed is interesting to me, just as I try very hard to only retweet quality stuff. If I'm spending so much time on the site, it ought to be worth my while and filled with interesting information! :)
QWQ Willis
And sorry for typos. Mobile safari doesn't like this comment form at all. It shows my cursor somewhere else entirely and it's hard to type, let alone edit all the mistakes it's causing!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Tim, sorry for the delay, I was speaking at a conference and it got a bit madly busy! It sounds like you have a good number of followers there! 500 per day is still quite a lot, but as you say the limit is said to be 1,000. However, I will assume that is spread across a 24 hour period and that there are lower limits per hour period. Twitter don't mention this, but they have limits for the number of Tweets you can send out per half hour. I've noticed I've hit limits when using ManageFlitter too, so I try and only follow 200-300 at one time, and then follow some more later. However, I don't do this every day, and I try and keep it to under 500.
I don't think it's anything to do with the gap between friends and followers, but in truth it is difficult to know. We have the Twitter limits that they publish and then there are the "dark limits" that only people at Twitter know about- and some of these are set by algorithms and so change regularly.
I think once you reach a certain number of followers, you shouldn't try and catch up with them. I don't adopt a follow back approach, because I want to keep the people I follow as engaged as possible. I also use Twitter lists a lot.
Hope all that makes sense!
TTim
Hi Ian, thanks for replying. And thanks also for your input Q Willis.
I think you're right that I've just been caught out with the “aggressive follower churn” thing. It's interesting that they took so long to 'catch' me, so I do wonder if something else happened. Perhaps I was blocked once too often or something, though I have no evidence of this.
For the record, I'm no spammer or anything and use Twitter in a legitimate way. My follow method worked very well for what I wanted to achieve and now I'll just need to change direction a little. It seems I'm currently being allowed to follow no more than 130 per day - another number with no meaning!
JSJohn Smith
For the last two consecutive weekends, I've had EVERY tweet that was favorited by the same specific Twitter account deleted from my Notifications list. This has occurred even though they are still favorited on the same Twitter account's Favorites list! We do follow each other and also DM periodically.
Is anyone aware of there being any cap on how many favorites a Twitter account can receive from another individual Twitter account before Twitter simply wipes them from their Notifications list, as has happened to me twice now? I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, as I do find it a bit frustrating!
Thanks in advance!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
That is odd. I assume this account is still accessible and hasn't been suspended? I'm not aware of a cap on how many favorites your account can give or receive, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one. Twitter have fairly strict guidelines on automation when it comes to things like this, so it might be that they noticed something odd and removed the favorites. Do you know how the other account favorited your tweets? Was it manual, or did they use an app? I've heard a number of cases of apps being banned for automation like this and Twitter might then delete activity via the app. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Ian
Mmsweets
for the last 2 weeks I have lost overnight 47 following/followers per week! Do I have to unfollow everybody that doesnt follow me? so I can get new followers? How do they decide who they just cut I wake up and lose 90 followers within the blink of an eye ! Bummed!
Mmsweets
so this is why the last 2 weeks I lose 47 followers/following? I have to unfollow all political candidates if I wish to get my followers? I had about 1910 following and 1900 followers next day both dropped by 47 followers I gained the same amount the second week and lose 47 again Damn!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
You shouldn't lose any followers, it's just that if you reach the limit, you won't be able to follow any more. As for not wanting to unfollow political candidates, I'd advise adding them to a Twitter list. That way, you can follow them in the list without actually following them. That will free you up to follow more people. We all get people unfollowing us (happens to me all the time), but if you can try and get more followers than people unfollowing you each week you are on to a winner!
Hi,I have a question. I'm going to reach 3000 followers on Twitter. But when someone follows me (that will make my follower 3000) and then I followed em back,my twitter followers suddenly will turn to 2,101 followers ONLY. And I am currently following 1,896 people. WHY? Please,I hope you can help me. Thank you!
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Sorry, Sheilla, I missed your comment. I don't entirely follow what you are saying. If you are following 1,896 people you will only be able to follow that number +10% back. There is no cap on how many people can follow you back. Ian
AAlice
I have been on tweet limit for over a week
MRMatthew Reagan
Maybe you can answer this simple question. No one else seems to know anything....How many tweets can be sent at one time? (Example) If I had 1000 followers and I sent out a tweet, would all 1000 receive the tweet. Is there a limit in how many tweets can go out at once?
Aana
My friend can reply to people retweet and favourite things but she cannot make normal tweets. Can you explain what is happening please? :)
How many followers can follow me one day on my profile?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
As far as I know there is no limit on that, although Twitter may flag your account if they suspect suspicious activity. Ian
KKen
I am new to twitter. I set up a list of 700, most are not following me. If I want to twitter the entire list, is that doable? Or, do I have to do one, two, three at a time only?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Ken. Unfortunately you can't target a tweet to a Twitter list. Twitter lists are a way for you to segment Twitter accounts on Twitter, but only for the reading of tweets- not sending. Ian
MRMatthew Reagan
When I tweet out my (Give Forward) donation site, how many people will see it with one tweet? I have 350 followers. Will they all receive it or do I have to send 2,3,4? more? And how would I do that?
RRobert
I am new to Twitter and has just follow 86 famous people and i has reach the limit. Now I need to enter my phone number.
"You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please add a phone to your account to remove the limit."
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
This is a fairly new thing, and I can't quite work out what the limit is. I wish Twitter wouldn't require validating with a phone because it makes having multiple Twitter accounts hard. Have you entered your phone number? If so, has the limit been removed?
I was trying to sign up with twitter but it keeps telling me they can't use my number why would it say that iv never had a twitter account before
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
That's odd. How long have you had your number for? The only thing I can think of is that someone else registered a Twitter account with your mobile phone number. Might be best to contact Twitter about this?
All your tweets will appear in your follower's timelines, except for replies. When you reply to a tweet, and their screen name is at the start of the tweet, only followers that also follow the person you are replying to will see that tweet in their timeline. Ian
RRon
I've been getting the message "You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please try again later or add a phone to your account". I've only sent about 60 tweets or so. What limit is it referring to and what does a phone number have to do with it? I don't have a text-message capable phone, so using that number wouldn't work anyway since they want to send me a text message to confirm. What does a Internet-based social networking site need subscriber phone numbers for anyway? Are they farming phone numbers for later sale?
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Hi Ron, thanks for your comment. As well as the limits I've listed in this article, there are also some secret, dark and mysterious limits that are only known to Twitter themselves. Some of these limits also vary and are determined by algorithms in the bid to combat spam. Whilst I haven't personally encountered this warning message before, I think Twitter want you to verify yourself using your phone. They are not selling numbers off, but it's a kind of "2nd factor authentication" which proves you are who you say you are- and that you aren't a bot. I know it is a pain, but if you can add your phone number and receive the code that will be sent to it and enter it back on Twitter, you'll probably find that you won't get these error messages. Of course this doesn't work if you have multiple Twitter accounts and only one phone, but I don't expect Twitter care very much about that. Ian
I've just had this message, and now I can't see Twitter at all, in any form, on any device. I tend to do a lot of tweets and retweets once a day. Today, I got that message after much less activity than usual. Over a period of 2 hours, I posted three tweets, retweeted about 10 things, followed one person, and sent one direct tweet. I'm so confused. If you want to see how small-time my feed is, you can see it at @QHWillisArt
I'm an artist, and only follow/interact with artists/art lovers/galleries, plus a handful of social marketing accounts and a few craft blogs. My follower score is 0% spam. So, I have no idea what I did wrong. I tried to add a phone number, but my mobile is already listed on my Twitter account.
I've had good luck with Twitter over maybe 450 tweets/retweets total. I'm a little worried about what I did wrong. And, I'm concerned that my account was compromised. The message was on a white screen with Times New Roman font, like in the early days of html.
I'm sure I'll get access at some point. But it's weird and annoying to have this happen. It's the second time I've been blocked - I followed too many artists the day I joined.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Is this still an issue for me, or has it been resolved? I looked at your Twitter account and can't see any reason why you should be having issues. You certainly haven't had your account suspended. Unfortunately, Twitter do put automated algorithms in place which try and detect unusual or spammy activity. Sometimes they get this wrong. I had one of my other Twitter accounts locked a few times due to it going wrong (unusually I received a personal message from the Twitter spam team about this). This might seem an odd question, but are you accessing your Twitter account over the same WiFi or mobile network each time? The reason I ask is that Twitter do monitor activity over each IP. A social media trainer friend of mine found that there were problems if lots of people tried to sign up for a new Twitter account in her workshops because they were doing so over the same IP. If you are having issues, it might be good to try over a different network or try and sign in to your Twitter account via a Friend's computer. Ian
Wow. Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed response. I don't believe I've ever seen a blogger who is so knowledgeable and so attentive. I am not having the same issue anymore, thankfully. However, I have since discovered several other seemingly-arbitrary "limits". For example, two days ago I was briefly locked after adding 3 people to a list, while two days before that I added 50 people to the same list without trouble. I have since read a bit more on the issue that originally led me here, and it seems other people have had the same trouble, but I haven't seen any answers. It seems to be an uncommon event.
To answer your other question, I am not always on the same network. Throughout the day, I switch between LTE, my wifi and sometimes my parents' wifi, and occasionally a random free Comcast network if my laptop has decided to annoy me. So I don't see that as a likely answer. I've had temporary restrictions while on all ~5 networks, and they definitely all have different IP addresses.
Overall, it's been annoying to get cut off from Twitter fairly regularly for things I see as exactly the same as what I did before and have done since without trouble. But it hasn't taken all that much time away, especially as I dedicate only about 45 minutes a day to my account. I am learning as I go, and I feel it's been an incredible benefit to my career. Hopefully I'm not building a list of strikes against me! But I don't expect I'll have any huge issues down the road, as I've been online since the late 80s and while Twitter is new to me, I'm comfortable with proper internet behavior/etiquette in general. It's scary to realize I've worked with people who weren't even born when I was using BBSs and alt lists! (Yes I was a nerd who was blessed with a nerd family, and yes, I've forgotten some details of it all along the way. My first "encounter" with an online sexual predator was in 1988! It's almost a badge of honor now!)
Again, thank you so much for the detailed response. I'm now a frequent reader simply because you are so passionate about your subject. That quality, more than anything else, makes a blog/blogger interesting and memorable.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
No problem, it's important to be as helpful as I can here. Time is the only issue! I really don't know what the issue could be with your Twitter account. Is it your Twitter account or just the Twitter website? I wonder if you tried to log in or create a new Twitter account whether there would be a problem. What actually happens? Is the Twitter account not accessible or do you get some kind of error message? If only you could email or call Twitter for technical support! The joys of a "free" service. Ian
I guess the comment tree went too far down, as I can't reply directly to your most recent reply. Hopefully this doesn't get confusing. It's definitely not my browser or app. I get some kind of notification from Twitter when it happens. Unfortunately, I can't even remember how I get the notifications, let alone the contents. My brain is too full! The message I got that brought me here was different, and that's why it stuck out. Also, those brief suspensions don't go away if I switch from phone to laptop, for example. I will start paying attention and keeping notes. Maybe I'll be able to see a pattern. If so, I'll pop back in to let you know.
I could create another Twitter account as part of my little investigation, but I don't think I'd actually use it enough to recreate the conditions of my current account. I don't have a whole lot to say! There's no legit way I can think of to build up 1,000 followers on a personal account as quickly as my art has attracted people - I don't share a lot of personal info on social media, and I keep just a small circle of true friends. It'd take ages to get people to follow via retweets, and lists, messages, all that junk, would be so annoying! I'm so busy with the business side of art that I don't know how I'd find the time for a second business account of any sort. If I kept up for a week it'd be an accomplishment. So, unfortunately I'm not going to be able to properly troubleshoot, and I'll have to live with the minor annoyances.
I still have a lot of learning to do, though. A couple nights ago, the account just blew up, and I got all kinds of new followers, favorites and retweets over maybe half an hour. I have so many people following and then unfollowing. I assume that's follower churning of some sort, because it seems most of the artists and professionals that follow me don't then unfollow me, with the one big exception being teenagers that are aspiring artists on top of their desire for social media popularity. I just check Crowdfire and see a whole bunch of people unfollowed during the day, but I never followed them and don't recall seeing them interact with my stream and they aren't artists. My follower numbers go up every day despite all the unfollowing I can see. And then the celebrities! Why on earth are such big names following me? It started with one "checkmark person" and there's been a few more who are "real famous" rather than twitter famous. I can't figure out how or why their PR person (I'm assuming it's never the real celebs) would bother to follow, and even interact, with me. Or how they found me in the first place. I don't follow any celebrities just because of their name - art and social media/marketing are all I care about on Twitter.
I know I'm late to the game and all my things to look into are beginner level. But there is so much to learn -- I can see how you would want to do this for a living. It's interesting stuff.
Ian Anderson GrayAuthor
I get a huge number of follow/unfollow churn each day. It used to bother me, but not anymore. There are still many people who try and game the system by following a large number of people each day to see who will follow them back. If they don't follow back they will unfollow them. It's a way of increasing the number of followers you have, despite Twitter banning the aggressive follow/unfollow church technique in their terms and conditions. Most of these people will use a tool- they will bulk follow all the followers of another account, or do another kind of search. I'm not sure what has happened to your account. It all sounds very odd. I hope you manage to sort it out. Ian
DPDavid Pickett
I found another limit -- if you are set so tweets go to your FaceBook wall, too many tweets in too little time and they start dropping the FaceBook copy. For instance, I go to click-to-give and click ten causes, tweeting each, daily, but my FaceBook wall does not show the last few. This block continues for a while, as I comment on the news. It really pisses me off, a broken promise. Some days I only get a short time to do my tweeting, and my FaceBook results are truncated.
Hi David. That sounds more like an issue with Facebook than with Twitter, but difficult to tell. Personally I wouldn't recommend an "always on" posting from Twitter to Facebook, because it doesn't always make sense (Twitter screen names are fairly meaningless on Twitter for example). You could use a service like IFTTT to send only certain Tweets to Facebook, for example if you use the hashtag #fb.
DMD.A.R. Member
Hi, Thank You for the Twitter 101, I have run into a problem though . I am not egotistical about who follows me but I love watching my news feed an gleaning the information and learning new things from who I follow. Recently I have noticed that many are following me each day but my number of followers does not change.I currently follow 2001 accounts and I am stuck at 923 followers for days now but many new followers on my notifications . Why is twitter not allowing my following number to rise when obviously I get from 4 to 10 new followers a day ?? WEIRD
Thanks for your comment. It looks like you have hit the follow limit of 2001. The number of followers not rising is more of a puzzling one. However, it could be that people are unfollowing you as well. Unfortunately it is a common tactic for people to follow you and then unfollow you if you don't follow them. This could be a reason why the number of followers is not increasing. Have a look at your number of followers and unfollows using a tool like Twittercounter or Sumall and see what is actually happening. Ian
DMD.A.R. Member
Thank You for your sage advice Ian, I will try what You have told me to do. If I could follow everyone who follows me I would but twitter wont allow me to. I do not get my panties in a wad if I follow someone and they do not follow me back. I guess I will have to figure all of this out. I will let you know .
No problem. Glad you'd not getting your "panties in a wad"! Try and look through the people you currently follow and see if any are worth unfollowing. You could use a tool like ManageFlitter to do this. If people aren't following you back and aren't engaging with you, you have to think whether they are worth following. Getting the number of people you follow and the starting to follow fresh people who are likely to engage with you is a good strategy. Also, embrace Twitter lists! I put the people I really want to follow in my "Seriously Social Awesome" Twitter list and that's the first place I visit when I go to Twitter. You don't have to actually follow all the people in your list, but you can still follow them in effect by adding them to the list. Hope that helps. Ian
I also got stuck at 2,000 follows and 1,100 followers. the 2,000 I understand but the 1,100 I don't. Keep getting more people following me but 1,100 doesn't move for over a day.
Kkivicko
hello!
i just wonder maybe if you know what is the limit of adding favorite per hour?
I'm finding a problem with adding people I follow to lists. After adding several people to my lists, whether through tweetbe.at (an online list manager) or through the Twitter web interface itself, it will no longer allow me to add more people. I'm trying to categorize my 600 followers into lists for the first time, and it's difficult if there's a limit of 20 or 30 at once.
Do you have any ideas about this? I'm using private lists and the people I'm trying to add are already members of other lists, so they haven't set any prefs to prevent it (if such things exists, I don't know.) Here are two screen shots to show you what I mean, with the error messages in purple boxes. (The Twitter web message says to reload the page, but that doesn't solve it.)
I'd really appreciate your helping me. I know that you must be very busy.
Thanks for your comment Jonathan. I've not used tweetbe before- is it a useful tool? I tend to use Manage Flitter to manage my Twitter accounts, although it doesn't allow full management of Twitter lists. You should be able to add up to 5,000 people to a Twitter list, so I am puzzled as to why you are receiving an error message saying "you aren't allowed to add members to this list". However, that doesn't sound like a Twitter error. Have you tried adding more members to the Twitter list via the main Twitter website? If you can add them there, then the issue lies with tweetbe. Happy to continue to help on here, or please feel free to contact me via my contact form. Ian
I think Teeetbe would be excellent if it worked as intended, which it isn't doing for me in adding people to lists. It has an easy-to-understand interface, and displays more information than the Twitter website shows on a single screen. It's also a much faster way to add and remove poeple, and you can add several people to several lists at once with just a few clicks on the same web page.
I'll try again and let you know. Thanks.
DDanFan57
I am currently following 27 people. Twitter says I am at the limit. What gives? I can find no way to ask them!
Hi and thanks for your comment. That's weird, there shouldn't be any limit to the number of people you can follow under 2,000. Have you tried to follow too many people in a short time scale? What's your Twitter name?
EEdinburghEye
Hi, I was doing some mass pre-emptive blocking because of a couple of fairly aggressive hashtags. Some of the accounts I blocked seemed to be spamming or operated by bots, so I reported them as spam accounts: some had @ my twitter handle in with some abuse and got reported as "annoying": but most of them were just accounts I actively did not want harassing me because I was using the hashtags they campaign on. I just got a message from Twitter saying "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!" This was when I had *not* tried to report the account I was blocking for spam. I tried blocking a few more accounts, and got the same message every time, even though I wasn't reporting the account, just blocking it. Is there a Twitter limit for number of accounts you can block? What is the Twitter limit for reporting accounts as spam accounts?
Hi. Thanks for your comment. I've never come across a limit of spam reporting. I don't think there is a limit for the number of accounts you can block, but that doesn't necessarily mean a limit doesn't exist. I think it is more likely that there is a limit to how many accounts you can block within a time frame. I know that Twitter has an algorithm (or two or three!) that can automatically flag your account if it notices "unusual" activity. My account has been locked a few times, and I have no idea why this happened.
SASteven Allen
I got the same. I just inherited an account with a new client. They have 15,000 followers but it appears 90+% is spam. Someones been buying followers in the past I guess. So, to get back some credibility I started blocking the obvious spam accounts (eggs that all stopped posting around 10 July and like to retweet @Gabriele_Corno pictures). I then got that message - "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!". No warning of getting banned or anything. Question, should I continue doing this or will the account have action taken against it? To get credibility back we need to shed this excess but if I put the account in jeopardy my new client might not be too impressed! I estimate I got the message after 200-250 blocks.
Thanks, Steven. The spam reporting limit obviously exists, but Twitter are not stating this publicly. I have reached out to Twitter to ask for confirmation but not heard anything as of yet.
Well, don't hold your breath. They haven't replied yet, and I don't think they will. Twitter have a very poor customer service record. If only I had a friend on in the inside! ;-)
Kkate
I got a follow limit and I cannot follow anyone. Will I can follow people again or should I create a new twittwr account?
Hi Kate. How many people do you follow? If you follow 1819 people you'll have to wait until more people follow you, or reduce the number of people you follow. In the article I mention it is to do with the ratio of the people you follow to the people who follow you.
Great article, thanks for being so clear and concise! It's a tricky business making sure you stay within limits, and i suppose twitter doesnt want to be too out straight about them, as they are already having issues with some folks. Imagine if we all got in on the action!
Hi, I'm wondering about the photo limits per account. I have tweeted on my account about 1,500 tweets since 2010-ish. Of these, about half of them have pictures. I've just noticed that many of my older tweets that used to have pics to them, now have no more pictures. For example, the link is still there (http://twitpic.com/32fc4q) but it is greyed out, and does not show the pic anymore. Intensely frustrating. Any way for us to access these pics again? Many thanks.
PAPeter A
Is there a point where sending constant (respectful, unique) tweets to the White house result in the twits being treated as spam/ Many activists groups encourage supporters to constantly send tweets to President Obama or the White House etc..
BBree
I joined a Get more followers things and now it wont stop following people for me and i keep getting spam about it. How do i stop it?
Hi Bree. Sorry to hear that. I assume you didn't give authorisation to an app for this? Just to check click on the settings cog in Twitter then click settings. Then click apps on the right and check through all the apps you've given permission for. Revoke any you don't recognise.
However as far as I know most of these "buy followers" services just pass on followers your way without needing access. This is much more tricky. Can you contact them and ask them to stop? It's also a case of blocking the people who spam you. I've never signed up for a follower service but even so I still get spammed regularly- I think a lot of people do.
QQueen.
im so mad at twitter right now i find it so stupid with the DM jail because it takes you forever to get out i've currently been waiting for over 2 hours please remove it
Ian Anderson Gray
I am unable to Tweet or Retweet because I "followed too many people too quickly and I might be a bot". Which is absurd. I followed approximately 38 people in about 4 minutes before I was cut off and no longer to do anything except "like" stuff. Is there a time frame when I can actually tweet, follow, update my bio or retweet again? I am NEW to twitter (about a month or so) and am just locating new Berners to follow. So...I'm lost here. Totally freaking lost.
I must add, that I verified with Twitter that my account was NOT suspended or revoked, but they wouldn't give me any other information. I'm having this problem on Mobile & Laptop. Can't do anything ... and yes, great article. I'm glad I found it before I made an unforgivable mistake. Lol
Oh dear, that is so annoying. Twitter have hard limits (as stated in this article) and flexible "soft" limits which are determined by algorithms they have running in the background. It sounds like you got caught by one of these. Obviously it was being over-zealous and thought you were a bot! I mean how dare you follow 38 people in 4 minutes! ;-) That is silly. Many people follow more than that on a daily basis and never have any issues. The other thing I would say is that there are lower follow limits in every hour (or possibly in every 15 min period) so don't follow all at once. It is best to do it in batches - follow some now, and then wait for an hour or so. Hope you get sorted. Ian
Hi Ian, thanks for posting very informative article. You have well described different types of limits of Twitter. Some times I am not getting a notification from my followers when they are re-tweet my tweet or they liked my tweet. Another question is, there is any limit for following people per day?
The upper limit you can follow per day is 1,000 - but you'd never actually want to do this. There are also smaller limits for each hour of the day so, you can't just follow lots all in one go.
You should receive notifications from your followers, but you may not receive email notifications for all of these. Twitter tries to send cut down on the number of emails it sends and so won't send you all notifications if you get a lot. There are work arounds to this using other tools, but it's a bit more complicated.
Hi, Ian
Thanks for your reply. Your answer is very helpful for me.
Hi Ian,
Very informative article. Just a quick one - We have around 12k followers and I want to send a personalised DM inviting them to support our campaign. Is it safe to use a twitter merge google doc? How many DMs will I be able to send in a day, is it a 1000? Does twitter penalize for mass DMs? I don't want my company account to be suspended... :(
Any inputs would be highly appreciated... Rajni
Hi Rajni, thanks for your comment and apologies for being slow in replying.
I've just got back from a conference.
You may not want me to say this, but I really advise against sending automated DMs - even if they are personalised. Evidence shows that your unfollow rate could increase by up to 235% if you send automated DMs. My inbox is awash with auto-DMs and it is pretty much unusable. Although I don't unfollow people who send them, I know many people that do. Just be careful!
As for whether Twitter will suspend you, that's a difficult question.
Twitter give a limit of 250 direct messages per day. That's the max limit, but they may well have lower limits per 15 minute window. For example they may suspend you if you send a certain number in just one hour. If you're going to send multiple direct messages, space out the sending throughout the day- and I'd recommend sending out quite a bit fewer than 250.
If you are using an app to do this, hopefully they will allow you to schedule it. You could also build your own app with the Twitter API and have more control over it.
Hope that helps.
Ian
Thank you for the informative words, Ian.
A pleasure, Ron! :-) Ian
Thank you! This was very informative as I am looking at building my Twitter account. I really appreciate the in-depth analysis of how Twitter monitors these things, and how they can impact my account.
Does not get notifications for my followers if i do like or rt or mention in my twitter, this happen with my all followers, iam sure they did not blocked me,
I have been following 1,000 and unfollowing750 per day with mangeflitter for 4 months with abt 30k followers now. NO problems or warnings from Twitter. I follow for 7ndays before unfollowing.
Is there a limit on the number of contacts that twitter can process when attempting a contact upload? I just established a new twitter account for the program that I manage, and I've tried everything I can think of to import the contacts from my work gmail (there are about 15,000 contacts) to look for folks to follow (I created a non-organizational gmail and imported the contacts... I created a yahoo email... I tried every web browser on my computer), and no matter what I do I get an error message when trying to import the contacts into Twitter. But if I try to use my personal gmail, which has more like 3,000 contacts, it works just fine.
Hi Tim, how annoying! I wish I knew, but Twitter don't publish limits on this. I'm pretty sure they will have limits though- and 15,000 sounds like a lot of contacts for them to deal with. The only work around is trying to do it in batches- just by creating 5 GMail accounts each with 3,000 contacts and adding them that way. A real pain, but I can't think of another solution. Ian
My account shows 107 likes in the top bar but none in the tab. Can't figure out why and would like to delete all my likes. Is this possible?
So when you look at your Twitter likes you can't see them? That's odd. You should be able to click on the "Likes" tab in your Twitter profile and view all your likes there- and then delete them all - one by one. If you've only liked 107 Tweets that's not a massive amount of work. I'm not sure if there are any apps that do this automatically or in bulk for you. Ian
Is there a limit to the number of tweets I can like on an individual account? How do I get rid of liked tweets because not all showmup when I open the tab?
Great question, unfortunately as far as I know, Twitter don't publish any limits on the number of likes. I think there will be a hard limit, but I don't know what that will be. It may be a flexible limit depending on your activity.
Ian
Are my tweets also deleted in my friends' account if his/her twitter account was suspended ? For example I tweeted him/her 50 times, then if his/her account was suspended, would my 50 tweets on him/her also be deleted automatically and cannot be seen in my account ?
waiting for your response . Thank you :)
Hi Jem. No, your tweets will still remain including ones where you mentioned your friend. If their account has been suspended then clicking on their screen name in your Tweets will link through their profile which will say that the account in question has been suspended.
Ian
What do you think Is it ok to tag unknown people and organizations in an irrelevant photo ? Because I guess I was attempting to do it here.
I suppose I would ask what your thinking was. I think too many people abuse photo tagging in Twitter. It can be used wisely- but you need to be careful. It could just annoy people and you might find yourself getting blocked.
Ian
Is there any limit on blocking?. I got too many fake followers so I'm trying block them all. Just want to know if there is any limit on the blocking.
Really good question. I just wish I had a good answer for you. From what I know there are no published limits on the number of blocks. My feeling is to spread the load over a few days, but I've blocked several hundred over an hour. I do remember getting a message to say I couldn't block any more- so Twitter will notify you. I also run an automated script on another account to automatically block accounts who spam mention me. I've never had any issues with that.
how many times can we post the same repeating pictures until it spam????
Hi Norch. Can you be more specific? Do you mean tweet the same image out multiple times? Twitter don't publish any limits for this, but you are likely to have your account flagged as spam by other users if you post the same content lots of times in a row. Twitter also have systems in place to monitor usage and if they spot the same Tweet being posted out or the same image it'll likely flag you.
Ian
If there are limits how do certain people get around it? Like Kanye West (or any celebrity), the rich and the famous who have millions of followers? What about someone who wants to utilize Twitter to BECOME famous? And why does Twitter dump your followers even when you aren't violating their rules? At one point I had over 900 followers, then I loofged in and only had 16 - what is that all about?
Some people buy followers. I can't speak for any celeb in particular, but there are plenty of cases of celebs buying followers from the likes of Fiverr.com. These accounts are usually inactive or even spam accounts and are just bought to make the celeb look good. It goes against Twitter's terms of service and you're not going to get any engagement from them. It is something to be avoided.
The best way to grow your number of followers is to make sure you are providing value and you follow people who are likely to follow you back.
Did Twitter remove legitimate followers from your account? What happened?
Hi
I am not able to tweet, follow, DM, favorite and my tweets are not visible to others when searched on twitter.
Though others are able to follow me, mention me and DM me.
When i try to tweet i am getting the following message:
"This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later."
Please help me to bring my twitter account to normal.
Thanks
Sorry I didn't get to reply until now. Is this still the case for you? It sounds like your Twitter account has been suspended. It's best to contact Twitter to ask about this.
For more information check here - https://support.twitter.com/articles/15790 Ian
Hi
I am trying to import my gmail contact on twitter.231 people are present on twitter but when i click on follow all it gives me the following message.
There was an error following your contacts. and when i go to home i can see myself following 100 people.
In my knowledge i can follow upto 2000 people but why it it throwing this error.
I have always had this same problem, I have never been able to use the "follow all" after importing contacts, it has never worked unled I go through the contacts one by one and select smaller groups of people to follow at a time. It's immensely time consuming and irritating, especially if you're using Twitter for work and just trying to build a follower base for you organization and care less about who exactly you're following.
Hi. My tweets cannot be seen in other people's mentions. why is that so? it happened on sunday night but came back to normal on monday but the problem occured again and people can only see my tweets to them in their mentions only after 24 hours. now the problem is still on going. help!
Did you post something repeating and repeating? If so your problem just like you're spamming.
but idk the solution of this problem you might just need to look it up.
Greetings,
Hi there,
Why I can not delete my tweets? I've deleted them up to 3K... And I would like to delete more... After that, I cannot view the rest remainder of my super super years of tweets. Why?
Waiting for the reply.
Twitter did have a limit of viewing your previous 3200 tweets. However they should have extended this. Is this not the case for you? You certainly should be able to view and delete them.
Have you tried to download your archive? Twitter allow you to download all your Tweets as an offline copy. That might allow you to get the links to the Tweets and be able to delete the ones you want to delete.
Ian
Can we create more than two accounts with different google email accounts?
I tried doing so but it keep asking for my number.. how do i skip from giving my number. Please advice.
Thanks!!
That's a really good question, James. I am surprised you are being asked to give a number. I manage over 40 Twitter accounts and I've not experienced this. Have you verified your email address for the 2nd account? One tip is to use the same GMail account by adding extra characters before the @ symbol with a + at the start. So, if your GMail address is example@gmail.com you could give the first Twitter account the email address example+twitter1@gmail.com and the 2nd one example+twitter2@gmail.com. GMail ignores anything after the + and before the @. Hope that makes sense!
Ian lately I am getting error messages about DMs and cannot find any information whatsoever on this. We have a group DM of 4 people going, sharing links and photos as we don't want it shared with everyone. After awhile it will cut me off from posting photos, even links and just lets me type messages. Any idea what this is? Thanks in advance. To solve the problem we have been deleting and starting a new DM thinking that it may be the size of the combined content. It's only happened to two of us, the error message.
That's odd. Unfortunately I don't know the answer. It sounds like it's one of those mysterious limits that Twitter don't talk about. It's probably a limit set by an algorithm.
Sorry I can't help any further. Ian
I appreciate your time, though, thank you! A Twitter oddity for certain!
Great article Ian, however, my experience with Twitter has been somewhat different.
My account is small (~ 93 followers, following about 139). However, whenever I attempt to follow back more than 4-5 people who have followed me Twitter blocks my account for 'suspicious behaviour'. I then have to go through the tedious process of unblocking my account for behaviour that I don't believe should be suspicious given the amount of activity.
This seems inconsistent with Twitter's stated policies. Do you think my situation is an anomaly? I'd appreciate your thoughts!
Thanks,
Yasmin
Hi Yasmin,
Thanks for your comment. Twitter have automated algorithms to spot "suspicious" behaviour. I've had one account in the past temporarily suspended and managed to get this resolved. Is your account being suspended each time? Have you connected with any 3rd party apps which are compromising your account? Check your Twitter settings. Also, does this happen only one internet connection? Do you share this with other people? I know Twitter log IPs. Ian
Hi Ian, Thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I've been cautious about following back and tend to follow back two or three accounts at a time which isn't an issue since my account is relatively small at the moment. Since I've started doing that I haven't had any issues but I don't always have time to go back and follow ... and it's more efficient to just follow back everyone at one time (not that I have a lot of followers right now but you know what I mean) :) The third party apps attached to my account are feedly, hootsuite, TweetChat (by oneQube), Twitter for Android, TweetDeck and Buffer.
I only follow back on my laptop so its the same internet connection and IP address. I'm the only person accessing this account.
I'll appreciate any advice/guidance you can provide!
Thank you!
Yasmin
I have a similar problem. I apparently followed too many too quickly during my campaign to help end the dolphin massacres in Taiji Japan and now get the message: "You are unable to follow more people at this time" whenever I attempt to follow someone. The problem started about 20 hours ago. What is the process I need to follow (no pun intended) to fix this? Do I do something to fix it or does the problem last for a set amount of time and clear up on it's own? Thank you in advance.
Hi Mark. How frustrating. Has this been resolved yet? The automated Twitter systems have flagged your account as following too many people. The problem is, that this was automated and sometimes these get things wrong. Hopefully, your account is back to normal. If not, you'll need to contact Twitter support. Unfortunately, they're not good at responding. I wish I had some better help! Ian
Is there a limit on how many people you can block? And if there is, and you exceed the limit, does it unblock your oldest blocked user?
Unfortunately, the honest answer is, I don't know, but I am very confident in saying there is no limit in the same way there is no limit to how many people can follow you on Twitter. There might be variable limits on how many people you can block at one time, but since Twitter now allow you to export and import block lists I'm not entirely confident on that. In any case, Twitter won't unblock a user unless you unblock them yourself.
Great page Ian!
For nearly a year I've been following 500 per day on Twitter using ManageFlitter and also unfollowing anywhere between 200-400 who haven't followed back. As I write, I have about 78.5k followers and I'm following about 77k.
Suddenly ManageFlitter is telling me that 250 new follows per day are being blocked, so I'm only being allowed 250 per day instead of 500 (although I know it should be 1000, but not unless you did it exactly every 24 hours). This has happened for over a week now, everyday.
Other than that, my account is working normally. The only thing I can see that may have changed is that my follower to followers count was closer. It would have been within a few hundred but has slowly stretched out to 1.5k which seemed like a natural progression to me. I'm wondering if for instance when the gap hit 1000, did it trigger a lower limit from Twitter? Any thoughts appreciated!
I'm sure Ian will answer with more info. But I want stI point out that while you are waiting, there's a comment and conversation on this post from back in 2012 or 2013. This issue was addressed back then. You might be getting blocked because you aren't actually supposed to be doing that. It's "frowned upon" to do bulk following/unfollowing for the purpose of getting followers. My guess would be they noticed what you are doing and are trying to discourage it. Clearly it's worked well for you, but maybe look for other ways? I won't follow people who do that, and if other people feel like I do, you might be losing some important followers to it. Good luck though. Twitter is an interesting little place!
Twitter certainly mention the "aggressive follower churn" technique and this is prohibited in their terms and conditions. This is the method to follow a large number of people and then very quickly unfollow them if they don't follow you back. I think the key word here is aggressive. Twitter don't want you to game the system. For me, I am looking for relevant people to follow and engage with. I sometimes will follow hundreds of people in one go, sometimes far less. I certainly don't do this every day. I then keep following them for a month and see if we have things in common, if we engage and if I like their content. If I really like their content, I add them to one of my Twitter lists and to ManageFlitter's "never unfollow" list. That way, I'll never unfollow them. Every so often, I will do a search on ManageFlitter for people who haven't followed me back and aren't included in my "Never Unfollow" list and for whom I followed over 30 days ago. I'll then go through and selectively unfollow them. I hope that makes sense. I think the slow organic approach is best.
I was banned from Twitter in my first two days, back earlier this year. I saw so many people following then unfollowing, and I got blocked after two days of doing it myself. I got a stern message from Twitter - I want to say it was via email, but it may have been a pop up of some sort. I don't believe I was being aggressive, I certainly wasn't even doing as little as the guy above me is doing. The warning made me think I was going to be banned, so I'm very very careful now. I try to only follow relevant people, and I look over their feed before deciding. That helps avoid the weird accounts that seem real but post nothing but spam. I know it sounds like I have a ton of trouble, and at first I definitely got everything wrong. But the warnings have pretty much disappeared as I've learned to use Twitter delicately. Thank goodness.
I really don't like follower churning, aggressive or otherwise. I keep an eye on the people that do it to me, and I make sure not to follow them for any reason. I check the list every few days in crowdfire, and I seem to have a decent memory for names/profile photos. For me, it seems so dishonest to constantly follow/unfollow. It makes someone think I am interested in them, when all I really care about is numbers. Perhaps that means I'm taking Twitter too personally, but my reputation means a lot to me, and I don't want to do anything that makes me look bad. I can understand what you are doing - you are following people for a purpose, not harassing everyone you can find. That wouldn't stop me from following you. But I don't want to interact with people who don't have any interest in art, so I don't indiscriminately follow. People like you, though, are clear exceptions to my personal rules. If someone has a blog, a business, an account etc that I find interesting, of course I follow even if it isn't related to art. But overall, while I use Twitter for promotion, I also want to make sure my feed is interesting to me, just as I try very hard to only retweet quality stuff. If I'm spending so much time on the site, it ought to be worth my while and filled with interesting information! :)
And sorry for typos. Mobile safari doesn't like this comment form at all. It shows my cursor somewhere else entirely and it's hard to type, let alone edit all the mistakes it's causing!
Hi Tim, sorry for the delay, I was speaking at a conference and it got a bit madly busy!
It sounds like you have a good number of followers there! 500 per day is still quite a lot, but as you say the limit is said to be 1,000. However, I will assume that is spread across a 24 hour period and that there are lower limits per hour period. Twitter don't mention this, but they have limits for the number of Tweets you can send out per half hour. I've noticed I've hit limits when using ManageFlitter too, so I try and only follow 200-300 at one time, and then follow some more later. However, I don't do this every day, and I try and keep it to under 500.
I don't think it's anything to do with the gap between friends and followers, but in truth it is difficult to know. We have the Twitter limits that they publish and then there are the "dark limits" that only people at Twitter know about- and some of these are set by algorithms and so change regularly.
I think once you reach a certain number of followers, you shouldn't try and catch up with them. I don't adopt a follow back approach, because I want to keep the people I follow as engaged as possible. I also use Twitter lists a lot.
Hope all that makes sense!
Hi Ian, thanks for replying. And thanks also for your input Q Willis.
I think you're right that I've just been caught out with the “aggressive follower churn” thing. It's interesting that they took so long to 'catch' me, so I do wonder if something else happened. Perhaps I was blocked once too often or something, though I have no evidence of this.
For the record, I'm no spammer or anything and use Twitter in a legitimate way. My follow method worked very well for what I wanted to achieve and now I'll just need to change direction a little. It seems I'm currently being allowed to follow no more than 130 per day - another number with no meaning!
For the last two consecutive weekends, I've had EVERY tweet that was favorited by the same specific Twitter account deleted from my Notifications list. This has occurred even though they are still favorited on the same Twitter account's Favorites list! We do follow each other and also DM periodically.
Is anyone aware of there being any cap on how many favorites a Twitter account can receive from another individual Twitter account before Twitter simply wipes them from their Notifications list, as has happened to me twice now? I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, as I do find it a bit frustrating!
Thanks in advance!
That is odd. I assume this account is still accessible and hasn't been suspended?
I'm not aware of a cap on how many favorites your account can give or receive, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one. Twitter have fairly strict guidelines on automation when it comes to things like this, so it might be that they noticed something odd and removed the favorites.
Do you know how the other account favorited your tweets? Was it manual, or did they use an app? I've heard a number of cases of apps being banned for automation like this and Twitter might then delete activity via the app. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Ian
for the last 2 weeks I have lost overnight 47 following/followers per week! Do I have to unfollow everybody that doesnt follow me? so I can get new followers? How do they decide who they just cut I wake up and lose 90 followers within the blink of an eye ! Bummed!
so this is why the last 2 weeks I lose 47 followers/following? I have to unfollow all political candidates if I wish to get my followers? I had about 1910 following and 1900 followers next day both dropped by 47 followers I gained the same amount the second week and lose 47 again Damn!
You shouldn't lose any followers, it's just that if you reach the limit, you won't be able to follow any more. As for not wanting to unfollow political candidates, I'd advise adding them to a Twitter list. That way, you can follow them in the list without actually following them. That will free you up to follow more people.
We all get people unfollowing us (happens to me all the time), but if you can try and get more followers than people unfollowing you each week you are on to a winner!
Hi,I have a question. I'm going to reach 3000 followers on Twitter. But when someone follows me (that will make my follower 3000) and then I followed em back,my twitter followers suddenly will turn to 2,101 followers ONLY. And I am currently following 1,896 people. WHY? Please,I hope you can help me. Thank you!
Sorry, Sheilla, I missed your comment. I don't entirely follow what you are saying. If you are following 1,896 people you will only be able to follow that number +10% back. There is no cap on how many people can follow you back. Ian
I have been on tweet limit for over a week
Maybe you can answer this simple question. No one else seems to know anything....How many tweets can be sent at one time? (Example) If I had 1000 followers and I sent out a tweet, would all 1000 receive the tweet. Is there a limit in how many tweets can go out at once?
My friend can reply to people retweet and favourite things but she cannot make normal tweets. Can you explain what is happening please? :)
How many followers can follow me one day on my profile?
As far as I know there is no limit on that, although Twitter may flag your account if they suspect suspicious activity.
Ian
I am new to twitter. I set up a list of 700, most are not following me.
If I want to twitter the entire list, is that doable? Or, do I have to do one, two, three at a time only?
Hi Ken. Unfortunately you can't target a tweet to a Twitter list. Twitter lists are a way for you to segment Twitter accounts on Twitter, but only for the reading of tweets- not sending.
Ian
When I tweet out my (Give Forward) donation site, how many people will see it with one tweet?
I have 350 followers. Will they all receive it or do I have to send 2,3,4? more? And how would I do that?
I am new to Twitter and has just follow 86 famous people and i has reach the limit.
Now I need to enter my phone number.
"You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please add a phone to your account to remove the limit."
This is a fairly new thing, and I can't quite work out what the limit is. I wish Twitter wouldn't require validating with a phone because it makes having multiple Twitter accounts hard. Have you entered your phone number? If so, has the limit been removed?
I was trying to sign up with twitter but it keeps telling me they can't use my number why would it say that iv never had a twitter account before
That's odd. How long have you had your number for? The only thing I can think of is that someone else registered a Twitter account with your mobile phone number. Might be best to contact Twitter about this?
Does my tweet sent to all my follower?
All your tweets will appear in your follower's timelines, except for replies. When you reply to a tweet, and their screen name is at the start of the tweet, only followers that also follow the person you are replying to will see that tweet in their timeline.
Ian
I've been getting the message "You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please try again later or add a phone to your account". I've only sent about 60 tweets or so. What limit is it referring to and what does a phone number have to do with it? I don't have a text-message capable phone, so using that number wouldn't work anyway since they want to send me a text message to confirm. What does a Internet-based social networking site need subscriber phone numbers for anyway? Are they farming phone numbers for later sale?
Hi Ron, thanks for your comment. As well as the limits I've listed in this article, there are also some secret, dark and mysterious limits that are only known to Twitter themselves. Some of these limits also vary and are determined by algorithms in the bid to combat spam. Whilst I haven't personally encountered this warning message before, I think Twitter want you to verify yourself using your phone. They are not selling numbers off, but it's a kind of "2nd factor authentication" which proves you are who you say you are- and that you aren't a bot. I know it is a pain, but if you can add your phone number and receive the code that will be sent to it and enter it back on Twitter, you'll probably find that you won't get these error messages. Of course this doesn't work if you have multiple Twitter accounts and only one phone, but I don't expect Twitter care very much about that. Ian
I've just had this message, and now I can't see Twitter at all, in any form, on any device. I tend to do a lot of tweets and retweets once a day. Today, I got that message after much less activity than usual. Over a period of 2 hours, I posted three tweets, retweeted about 10 things, followed one person, and sent one direct tweet. I'm so confused. If you want to see how small-time my feed is, you can see it at @QHWillisArt
I'm an artist, and only follow/interact with artists/art lovers/galleries, plus a handful of social marketing accounts and a few craft blogs. My follower score is 0% spam. So, I have no idea what I did wrong. I tried to add a phone number, but my mobile is already listed on my Twitter account.
I've had good luck with Twitter over maybe 450 tweets/retweets total. I'm a little worried about what I did wrong. And, I'm concerned that my account was compromised. The message was on a white screen with Times New Roman font, like in the early days of html.
I'm sure I'll get access at some point. But it's weird and annoying to have this happen. It's the second time I've been blocked - I followed too many artists the day I joined.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Is this still an issue for me, or has it been resolved? I looked at your Twitter account and can't see any reason why you should be having issues. You certainly haven't had your account suspended. Unfortunately, Twitter do put automated algorithms in place which try and detect unusual or spammy activity. Sometimes they get this wrong. I had one of my other Twitter accounts locked a few times due to it going wrong (unusually I received a personal message from the Twitter spam team about this).
This might seem an odd question, but are you accessing your Twitter account over the same WiFi or mobile network each time? The reason I ask is that Twitter do monitor activity over each IP. A social media trainer friend of mine found that there were problems if lots of people tried to sign up for a new Twitter account in her workshops because they were doing so over the same IP. If you are having issues, it might be good to try over a different network or try and sign in to your Twitter account via a Friend's computer. Ian
Wow. Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed response. I don't believe I've ever seen a blogger who is so knowledgeable and so attentive. I am not having the same issue anymore, thankfully. However, I have since discovered several other seemingly-arbitrary "limits". For example, two days ago I was briefly locked after adding 3 people to a list, while two days before that I added 50 people to the same list without trouble. I have since read a bit more on the issue that originally led me here, and it seems other people have had the same trouble, but I haven't seen any answers. It seems to be an uncommon event.
To answer your other question, I am not always on the same network. Throughout the day, I switch between LTE, my wifi and sometimes my parents' wifi, and occasionally a random free Comcast network if my laptop has decided to annoy me. So I don't see that as a likely answer. I've had temporary restrictions while on all ~5 networks, and they definitely all have different IP addresses.
Overall, it's been annoying to get cut off from Twitter fairly regularly for things I see as exactly the same as what I did before and have done since without trouble. But it hasn't taken all that much time away, especially as I dedicate only about 45 minutes a day to my account. I am learning as I go, and I feel it's been an incredible benefit to my career. Hopefully I'm not building a list of strikes against me! But I don't expect I'll have any huge issues down the road, as I've been online since the late 80s and while Twitter is new to me, I'm comfortable with proper internet behavior/etiquette in general. It's scary to realize I've worked with people who weren't even born when I was using BBSs and alt lists! (Yes I was a nerd who was blessed with a nerd family, and yes, I've forgotten some details of it all along the way. My first "encounter" with an online sexual predator was in 1988! It's almost a badge of honor now!)
Again, thank you so much for the detailed response. I'm now a frequent reader simply because you are so passionate about your subject. That quality, more than anything else, makes a blog/blogger interesting and memorable.
No problem, it's important to be as helpful as I can here. Time is the only issue! I really don't know what the issue could be with your Twitter account. Is it your Twitter account or just the Twitter website? I wonder if you tried to log in or create a new Twitter account whether there would be a problem. What actually happens? Is the Twitter account not accessible or do you get some kind of error message? If only you could email or call Twitter for technical support! The joys of a "free" service. Ian
I guess the comment tree went too far down, as I can't reply directly to your most recent reply. Hopefully this doesn't get confusing. It's definitely not my browser or app. I get some kind of notification from Twitter when it happens. Unfortunately, I can't even remember how I get the notifications, let alone the contents. My brain is too full! The message I got that brought me here was different, and that's why it stuck out. Also, those brief suspensions don't go away if I switch from phone to laptop, for example. I will start paying attention and keeping notes. Maybe I'll be able to see a pattern. If so, I'll pop back in to let you know.
I could create another Twitter account as part of my little investigation, but I don't think I'd actually use it enough to recreate the conditions of my current account. I don't have a whole lot to say! There's no legit way I can think of to build up 1,000 followers on a personal account as quickly as my art has attracted people - I don't share a lot of personal info on social media, and I keep just a small circle of true friends. It'd take ages to get people to follow via retweets, and lists, messages, all that junk, would be so annoying! I'm so busy with the business side of art that I don't know how I'd find the time for a second business account of any sort. If I kept up for a week it'd be an accomplishment. So, unfortunately I'm not going to be able to properly troubleshoot, and I'll have to live with the minor annoyances.
I still have a lot of learning to do, though. A couple nights ago, the account just blew up, and I got all kinds of new followers, favorites and retweets over maybe half an hour. I have so many people following and then unfollowing. I assume that's follower churning of some sort, because it seems most of the artists and professionals that follow me don't then unfollow me, with the one big exception being teenagers that are aspiring artists on top of their desire for social media popularity. I just check Crowdfire and see a whole bunch of people unfollowed during the day, but I never followed them and don't recall seeing them interact with my stream and they aren't artists. My follower numbers go up every day despite all the unfollowing I can see. And then the celebrities! Why on earth are such big names following me? It started with one "checkmark person" and there's been a few more who are "real famous" rather than twitter famous. I can't figure out how or why their PR person (I'm assuming it's never the real celebs) would bother to follow, and even interact, with me. Or how they found me in the first place. I don't follow any celebrities just because of their name - art and social media/marketing are all I care about on Twitter.
I know I'm late to the game and all my things to look into are beginner level. But there is so much to learn -- I can see how you would want to do this for a living. It's interesting stuff.
I get a huge number of follow/unfollow churn each day. It used to bother me, but not anymore. There are still many people who try and game the system by following a large number of people each day to see who will follow them back. If they don't follow back they will unfollow them. It's a way of increasing the number of followers you have, despite Twitter banning the aggressive follow/unfollow church technique in their terms and conditions. Most of these people will use a tool- they will bulk follow all the followers of another account, or do another kind of search.
I'm not sure what has happened to your account. It all sounds very odd. I hope you manage to sort it out. Ian
I found another limit -- if you are set so tweets go to your FaceBook wall, too many tweets in too little time and they start dropping the FaceBook copy. For instance, I go to click-to-give and click ten causes, tweeting each, daily, but my FaceBook wall does not show the last few. This block continues for a while, as I comment on the news. It really pisses me off, a broken promise. Some days I only get a short time to do my tweeting, and my FaceBook results are truncated.
Hi David. That sounds more like an issue with Facebook than with Twitter, but difficult to tell. Personally I wouldn't recommend an "always on" posting from Twitter to Facebook, because it doesn't always make sense (Twitter screen names are fairly meaningless on Twitter for example). You could use a service like IFTTT to send only certain Tweets to Facebook, for example if you use the hashtag #fb.
Hi, Thank You for the Twitter 101, I have run into a problem though . I am not egotistical about who follows me but I love watching my news feed an gleaning the information and learning new things from who I follow. Recently I have noticed that many are following me each day but my number of followers does not change.I currently follow 2001 accounts and I am stuck at 923 followers for days now but many new followers on my notifications . Why is twitter not allowing my following number to rise when obviously I get from 4 to 10 new followers a day ?? WEIRD
Thanks for your comment. It looks like you have hit the follow limit of 2001. The number of followers not rising is more of a puzzling one. However, it could be that people are unfollowing you as well. Unfortunately it is a common tactic for people to follow you and then unfollow you if you don't follow them. This could be a reason why the number of followers is not increasing. Have a look at your number of followers and unfollows using a tool like Twittercounter or Sumall and see what is actually happening.
Ian
Thank You for your sage advice Ian, I will try what You have told me to do. If I could follow everyone who follows me I would but twitter wont allow me to. I do not get my panties in a wad if I follow someone and they do not follow me back. I guess I will have to figure all of this out. I will let you know .
No problem. Glad you'd not getting your "panties in a wad"! Try and look through the people you currently follow and see if any are worth unfollowing. You could use a tool like ManageFlitter to do this. If people aren't following you back and aren't engaging with you, you have to think whether they are worth following. Getting the number of people you follow and the starting to follow fresh people who are likely to engage with you is a good strategy. Also, embrace Twitter lists! I put the people I really want to follow in my "Seriously Social Awesome" Twitter list and that's the first place I visit when I go to Twitter. You don't have to actually follow all the people in your list, but you can still follow them in effect by adding them to the list. Hope that helps. Ian
I also got stuck at 2,000 follows and 1,100 followers. the 2,000 I understand but the 1,100 I don't. Keep getting more people following me but 1,100 doesn't move for over a day.
hello!
i just wonder maybe if you know what is the limit of adding favorite per hour?
could u reply me at kivilcim.eray@gmail.com
thanks!
Hi, sorry for the delay. There may be a "soft" limit for this, but Twitter haven't made it public. Have you encountered a limit?
Ian
Hi Ian. Thanks very much for your post.
I'm finding a problem with adding people I follow to lists. After adding several people to my lists, whether through tweetbe.at (an online list manager) or through the Twitter web interface itself, it will no longer allow me to add more people. I'm trying to categorize my 600 followers into lists for the first time, and it's difficult if there's a limit of 20 or 30 at once.
Do you have any ideas about this? I'm using private lists and the people I'm trying to add are already members of other lists, so they haven't set any prefs to prevent it (if such things exists, I don't know.) Here are two screen shots to show you what I mean, with the error messages in purple boxes. (The Twitter web message says to reload the page, but that doesn't solve it.)
I'd really appreciate your helping me. I know that you must be very busy.
Many thanks,
Jonathan
jmenon [at] gmail [dot] com
Thanks for your comment Jonathan. I've not used tweetbe before- is it a useful tool? I tend to use Manage Flitter to manage my Twitter accounts, although it doesn't allow full management of Twitter lists. You should be able to add up to 5,000 people to a Twitter list, so I am puzzled as to why you are receiving an error message saying "you aren't allowed to add members to this list". However, that doesn't sound like a Twitter error. Have you tried adding more members to the Twitter list via the main Twitter website? If you can add them there, then the issue lies with tweetbe. Happy to continue to help on here, or please feel free to contact me via my contact form. Ian
Hi Ian,
I think Teeetbe would be excellent if it worked as intended, which it isn't doing for me in adding people to lists. It has an easy-to-understand interface, and displays more information than the Twitter website shows on a single screen. It's also a much faster way to add and remove poeple, and you can add several people to several lists at once with just a few clicks on the same web page.
I'll try again and let you know. Thanks.
I am currently following 27 people. Twitter says I am at the limit. What gives? I can find no way to ask them!
Hi and thanks for your comment. That's weird, there shouldn't be any limit to the number of people you can follow under 2,000. Have you tried to follow too many people in a short time scale? What's your Twitter name?
Hi, I was doing some mass pre-emptive blocking because of a couple of fairly aggressive hashtags. Some of the accounts I blocked seemed to be spamming or operated by bots, so I reported them as spam accounts: some had @ my twitter handle in with some abuse and got reported as "annoying": but most of them were just accounts I actively did not want harassing me because I was using the hashtags they campaign on. I just got a message from Twitter saying "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!" This was when I had *not* tried to report the account I was blocking for spam. I tried blocking a few more accounts, and got the same message every time, even though I wasn't reporting the account, just blocking it. Is there a Twitter limit for number of accounts you can block? What is the Twitter limit for reporting accounts as spam accounts?
Hi. Thanks for your comment. I've never come across a limit of spam reporting. I don't think there is a limit for the number of accounts you can block, but that doesn't necessarily mean a limit doesn't exist. I think it is more likely that there is a limit to how many accounts you can block within a time frame. I know that Twitter has an algorithm (or two or three!) that can automatically flag your account if it notices "unusual" activity. My account has been locked a few times, and I have no idea why this happened.
I got the same. I just inherited an account with a new client. They have 15,000 followers but it appears 90+% is spam. Someones been buying followers in the past I guess. So, to get back some credibility I started blocking the obvious spam accounts (eggs that all stopped posting around 10 July and like to retweet @Gabriele_Corno pictures). I then got that message - "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!". No warning of getting banned or anything. Question, should I continue doing this or will the account have action taken against it? To get credibility back we need to shed this excess but if I put the account in jeopardy my new client might not be too impressed! I estimate I got the message after 200-250 blocks.
Thanks, Steven. The spam reporting limit obviously exists, but Twitter are not stating this publicly. I have reached out to Twitter to ask for confirmation but not heard anything as of yet.
This is very interesting. Kudos to you both for investigating spam reporting limits! Interested to hear what you find out
Well, don't hold your breath. They haven't replied yet, and I don't think they will. Twitter have a very poor customer service record. If only I had a friend on in the inside! ;-)
I got a follow limit and I cannot follow anyone. Will I can follow people again or should I create a new twittwr account?
Hi Kate. How many people do you follow? If you follow 1819 people you'll have to wait until more people follow you, or reduce the number of people you follow. In the article I mention it is to do with the ratio of the people you follow to the people who follow you.
Great article, thanks for being so clear and concise! It's a tricky business making sure you stay within limits, and i suppose twitter doesnt want to be too out straight about them, as they are already having issues with some folks. Imagine if we all got in on the action!
It definitely is tricky, and it's not helped by the fact that Twitter doesn't make all the limits clear!
Most helpful article, Ian! Thank you.
Glad you found it useful!
Hi, I'm wondering about the photo limits per account. I have tweeted on my account about 1,500 tweets since 2010-ish. Of these, about half of them have pictures. I've just noticed that many of my older tweets that used to have pics to them, now have no more pictures. For example, the link is still there (http://twitpic.com/32fc4q) but it is greyed out, and does not show the pic anymore. Intensely frustrating. Any way for us to access these pics again? Many thanks.
Is there a point where sending constant (respectful, unique) tweets to the White house result in the twits being treated as spam/ Many activists groups encourage supporters to constantly send tweets to President Obama or the White House etc..
I joined a Get more followers things and now it wont stop following people for me and i keep getting spam about it. How do i stop it?
Hi Bree. Sorry to hear that. I assume you didn't give authorisation to an app for this? Just to check click on the settings cog in Twitter then click settings. Then click apps on the right and check through all the apps you've given permission for. Revoke any you don't recognise.
However as far as I know most of these "buy followers" services just pass on followers your way without needing access. This is much more tricky. Can you contact them and ask them to stop? It's also a case of blocking the people who spam you. I've never signed up for a follower service but even so I still get spammed regularly- I think a lot of people do.
im so mad at twitter right now i find it so stupid with the DM jail because it takes you forever to get out i've currently been waiting for over 2 hours please remove it