Twitter suspends 70 million accounts in clean up efforts

Twitter has suspended more than 70 million accounts in the past three months as the firm escalates its battle to remove bots and fake accounts.

According to data obtained by the Washinton Post, the firm’s new aggressive suspension has actually resulted in one of the few declines of the Twitter’s Monthly Active USers, one of the metrics used by the firm when it measures its success.

Twitter is also looking at the way it determines how tweets and the behaviour of Twitter users can be malicious or otherwise and weighing them against its ideal of freedom of expression.

“One of the biggest shifts is in how we think about balancing free expression versus the potential for free expression to chill someone else’s speech,” Twitter’s VP for Trust and Safety Del Harvey said in an interview with the Washington Post. “Free expression doesn’t really mean much if people don’t feel safe.”

While some may see Twitter’s bot purge as counterproductive for the firm, it is worth noting that aside from the goodwill generated, the firm is getting rid of junk users who don’t contribute useable data for advertisers; While many wish Twitter had acted quicker and more decisively, it is better to do something late, than never at all.

Source: Washington Post