More clarification needed regarding changes to bulk tweet rules

[MedscapeChat]

Hi,

I have about 10 legit accounts where I frequently cross-post the same links. I wish there was more guidance on what constitutes substantially similar content. Same URL? Image? Keywords? Hashtags? I accept the fact that I will now need to rewrite every single tweet but it would be helpful to know how NOT to run into trouble with these very vague new rules.

Honestly a better solution would have been to verify accounts like Facebook did and ask us to place code into our websites. This new change makes using the platform for journalism sites very challenging and frankly puts all the burden on the user with no heavy lift by Twitter.

[eliasisrael]

By the new rules, you can’t event repeat a tweet on a single account to remind followers about an upcoming event.

Twitter is making some very puzzling choices on this topic, and as usual communicating vaguely about the impact. I’ve dined with politicians who give straighter answers.

[MedscapeChat]

I assume a word change here or there will suffice. But sure wish there was more guidance. We don’t break the rules but you have to have clear rules to know how to stay on the correct side of the line.

[eliasisrael]

I wouldn’t make that assumption. The quickest and most scalable implementation of what this rule implies is for Twitter to compute a hash for each tweet and store them in a HyperLogLog. (Similar to how they probably compute quickly if someone is a follower.) No hashing function is going to do a perfect job of this, and still protect against minuscule changes, so expect a mess, at least the begin with.

[andypiper]

From a developer platform perspective, we’ll be enforcing the state that applications must not allow large scale duplicative posting of content, or simultaneous use of multiple accounts to post, like, retweet etc., because that is both the developer policy, and in the Twitter Rules that users need to follow.

These discussion forums exist to support developers building with the platform, and we are unable to offer additional guidance or support here related to the use of Twitter in general. Please use help.twitter.com for more assistance on usage of the service, and our user-facing rules and policies.

Closing this thread as there’s no specific API or developer platform question that we can assist with. Thank you.

[andypiper]