Yesterday we took action against a number of accounts that we believe have violated our policies by creating new accounts after being suspended. This is a part of the work we're doing every day to improve Twitter.
We proactively identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies, including having multiple accounts. We take action on these accounts in various ways.
One enforcement action is to "lock" the account in question and ask its owners to confirm a phone number, so we can determine if the account is automated. When accounts are in this state, they’re removed from follower counts until phone numbers are provided to us.
Another action we take is to suspend accounts that we catch violating our rules, which also removes them from follower counts. While it may be hard to see follower counts go down, these actions are making Twitter a better place for everyone.
We are focused on sharing more information about our new and ongoing work in this space, but there may be some information we won't share to prevent against malicious accounts taking advantage of what we are revealing to circumvent our systems.
We enforce our rules without political bias. We are committed to continuing these efforts to make Twitter better and everyone should expect continued visible impact of our work.
