Error 326 False positive

[spurs_family1]

Hi guys

I wonder if anyone can help I develop an application which has a feature to help find like minded people on Twitter the app makes a list of people that share your interest. So in this example I look for fans of the same sports team as mine. I then have a list of people to follow so lets say 120 people.

I click follow and after about 50-75 follows I get this error

{“errors”:[{“code”:326,“message”:“To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, this account is temporarily locked. Please log in to https://twitter.com to unlock your account.”}]}

The follow is done by clicking on each user its in no way automated and I have even added a few second delay between clicks but this error pops up. I then verify my account by email or phone number and it works ok. The next day when I try again the same thing happens. Is this an error at twitters end or I am being flagged incorrectly.

Any help much appreciated and thanks for reading.

[DanielCHood]

Following 75 people in a short period of time is spammy behavior and results in a flag from Twitter’s automated system. Try spacing out your actions.

The users of my app have this happen pretty often as well, despite it not being spam. We encourage them to do less actions to get the system more used to their behavior. Seems to work out.

[spurs_family1]

Thanks for replying daniel I understand what your saying. It would be better if they just rate limited follows to 50 per 15min window or something so it was a little more clear, I will add warnings to my system anyway like you said.

Best wishes