Twitter suspends several accounts infamous for stealing tweets

SAN FRANCISCO: Continuing its tirade against the "tweetdeckers", Twitter has suspended several popular accounts known for stealing tweets or mass-retweeting tweets into manufactured virality.

According to Buzzfeed, accounts, including @Dory, @GirlPosts, @SoDamnTrue, Girl Code/@reiatabie, Common White Girl/@commonwhitegiri, @teenagernotes, @finah, @holyfag, and @memeprovider were among the handles that were swept in the purge.

Several of these accounts were very popular with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers.

In addition to stealing people's tweets without credit, some of these accounts are known as "tweetdeckers" due to their practice of teaming up in exclusive Tweetdeck groups and mass-retweeting one another's -- and paying customers' -- tweets into forced virality, the report said.

Tweetdecking is an explicit violation of Twitter's spam policy, which does not allow users to "sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions".

According to Twitter's rules, violating this policy is grounds for permanent suspension. (As is creating a new account to evade a permanent suspension.)

Last week, a study led by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scholars found that false news on politics travels farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth on Twitter because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.