How to make multiple bots, one per region?

[FireUnofficial]

My understanding is we can legitimately make multiple bots when each bot is giving for example regional specific information. This bot https://twitter.com/FireUnofficial posts automatic public information about US wildfires.

However, it would be more useful to follow a bot with information about just fires in your area, otherwise it is just too much information to care about. However, as I make the state/region accounts, even before I post anything I get a ‘suspicious activity’ error and am required to put in a phone number. Of course the phone number is already in use, and so I get stuck. I don’t have 50 phone numbers

What is the solution to doing this right? Our bot has actually useful non-commercial/non-political content, and I don’t want it all getting discarded as spam…

[FireUnofficial]

Btw, the rules state " Duplicate accounts: You may not create and/or automate multiple accounts for duplicative or substantially similar use cases.

• However, automating multiple accounts for related but non-duplicative use cases is permitted. For example, you may automate separate accounts to Tweet when the Hubble Space Telescope passes over different cities, such as San Franciscoor Hong Kong."

I believe my use case is precisely the exemption stated in the end.

[LeBraat]

You are definitely reading into the proper policies that address this situation.

Unfortunately this seems to be more of an account issue however, and I – as an agent working on the developer team – don’t have the ability to help you out here. Please reach out to our general Twitter Support team to learn more about what you can do here.

[FireUnofficial]

Thanks - the problem is that essentially Twitter wants me to prove the account is not a bot, but of course it IS a bot, it just happens to be a legitimate one. I’ll try the regular support process again.

Some feedback for you and the API folks: Please let us declare an account as a bot during sign-up. Then the user interface could display in our profile and in every tweet the bot posts a “BOT” badge. That way both users get to know that what they read is from a bot for transparency, and it would be easier for us with legit bots to operate. (Frankly legit bots would prefer users know they are bots - no reason for a person to reply thinking they are talking to a human.)

[FireUnofficial]

An update on our progress here: Our accounts get locked immediately on creation, we fail to identify using a phone number (b/c we don’t have enough numbers), we appeal, and a few days later get unlocked. It is a painful process, esp. when there is disaster information to disseminate, but it appears to work so far.

Really wish Twitter would let us identify ourselves as bots so no one feels fooled.

[happycamper]

@FireUnofficial - This does not sound like a Twitter API issue, this is an account set up issue. Please contact the users team through this form to let them know what you’re working on if your accounts keep being flagged: https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended

[happycamper]