Twitter cutting down on spam

New users must verify accounts with email or phone number

As part of what seems like a never-ending effort to rid itself of spam and fake accounts, Twitter has launched a set of new protocols and policies targeting what it calls “malicious automation” and the prevalence of spambots posting on the social media site.

Twitter made the announcement in a post on its corporate blog. The measures include requiring new Twitter users to sign up with either a phone number or an email account. In the company post, written by Twitter officials Yoel Roth and Del Harvey, the new verification steps are meant “to defend against people who try to take advantage of our openness.”

The company also said it will cut down on the visibility of “spammy” accounts by removing those from individuals’ Twitter follower figures and engagement data until those accounts

confirm a phone number, or pass another kind of challenge to confirm their validity.

Twitter has about 330 million user accounts worldwide. However, the company has been beset with fake or spam accounts almost since its first tweets went out.

In their blog post, Roth and Harvey noted that in May, Twitter’s systems identified and challenged 9.9 million “potentially spammy or automated accounts per week.” That figure was up from the 6.4 million accounts Twitter challenged in December 2017, and the 3.2 million accounts challenged last September.