To fight spam accounts, Twitter is decreasing the maximum amount of people a single user can follow in day from 1,000 down to just 400.
The idea with this new limit is that it helps prevent spammers from rapidly growing their networks by following then unfollowing Twitter accounts "bulk, aggressive or indiscriminate manner," which is a clear violation of Twitter's policies. A number of services were recently banned from Twitter's API for making similar maneuvers.
Twitter made the announcement from its official account on April 9, tweeting, "Don't worry, you'll be just fine."
Twitter Limits Maximum Daily Follows
Some companies offer tools to batch-follow with little effort. As TechCrunch notes, this works a growth tactic because those who were followed will likely follow back as a gesture of courtesy, even if they don't realize the account is a spam bot.
These same companies also provide tools to batch-unfollow accounts that don't follow back. Twitter suspended a number of accounts earlier this year for this reason, which it calls "following and follow churn." With the most recent change, it's clear Twitter is serious about taking on these spammers.
Why 400?
Even still, some users think Twitter isn't going far enough. In response to the announcement, several people have asked why Twitter chose to limit daily follows to 400 specifically, as that is still quite a large amount to follow in just a single day. Some users recalled how it took years to get to the point of following hundreds of people. Here's what Twitter said:
"We looked at follow behavior at various thresholds, and selected 400 as a reasonable limit that stopped most spam while not affecting legitimate users."
Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity, added:
"99.87% of Twitter users are totally unaffected by this lower rate limit. Most people don't need or want to follow that many accounts. But some legitimate accounts, like businesses providing customer service by DM, actually do need it, and we want to avoid burdening them."
