Twitter Reportedly Suspended ‘Tweetdeckers’ for Stealing and Selling Content

Having already dealt with bots that can possibly help swing elections and a self-imposed inability to ban a president who openly violates their policies, Twitter is now also dealing with a number of users reportedly stealing memes and tweets in attempts to go viral.

“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,” wrote Julia Reinstein in a recent Buzzfeed News report. “A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on individual accounts, but BuzzFeed News understands the accounts were suspended for violating Twitter's spam policy.”

Users @finah, @holyfag, Common White Girl/@commonwhitegiri, @teenagernotes, @Dory, @GirlPosts, @SoDamnTrue, Girl Code/@reiatabie, and @memeprovider were all reportedly suspended over the weekend for violating Twitter’s spam policy, which is quoted below:

In an extremely meta move, Twitter users poked fun at the suspended accounts with memes and commentary of their own.

Some users involved in the “Tweetdecking” crackdown were allegedly accepting compensation to amplify tweets. And since Twitter’s spam policy also calls for a suspension or a ban of users who “sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions,” those users were suspended along with those accused of retweeting individual tweets and memes across multiple accounts via standalone apps or scheduling automated retweets.