A bunch of massively popular accounts that are known for stealing other people’s viral tweets, including Common White Girl and Dory, were suspended late on Friday. BuzzFeed reported that the mass suspension was just the latest effort by Twitter to crack down on the process known as “tweetdecking,” in which a person gets paid to send the same tweet from multiple accounts using TweetDeck.
Twitter already made a significant change earlier this year to prevent tweetdecking; it removed the option to send the same tweet across multiple accounts simultaneously. Now the accounts—which racked up millions of followers and stole funny tweets without giving credit—are actually gone from Twitter.
Twitter users hated accounts like Common White Girl, which were popular with the “locals,” and now people are celebrating.
https://twitter.com/tommytheworId/status/972353083295649798
https://twitter.com/tommytheworId/status/972374925611819008
https://twitter.com/GGFrosteV9/status/972415284693950464
https://twitter.com/alxbmfrd/status/972527281175449600
dory and commonwhitegirl meeting up through their backup accounts after getting suspended on twitter pic.twitter.com/13K8QActxt
— j (@heymrstark) March 11, 2018
omg twitter finally suspended dory and commonwhitegirl pic.twitter.com/ZHg8gaxkig
— T. Kyle (@tkylemac) March 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/fastjelIyfish/status/972970370587381760
Twitter’s rules state that users who engage in spam may be “temporarily locked or subject to permanent suspension.” The company’s definition of spam includes posting “duplicative or substantially similar content, replies, or mentions over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account.”
A Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Dot that the suspensions were part of a broad effort to fight spam across the website, but the accounts were not suspended because they “stole” tweets from other users. Twitter did not confirm that the suspensions are permanent, but it’s likely that the accounts are gone for good.