Twitter has slashed the number of accounts you're able to follow each day from 1,000 to 400. The new limit is designed to stop spammers following and unfollowing huge numbers of users in an attempt to rapidly increase their follower count.
This is known as 'follower churn', which is prohibited by Twitter's rules. According to Twitter's Help Center, if you exceed the 400-follow limit you'll see an error message saying “you are unable to follow more people at this time”.
Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.April 8, 2019
A Twitter spokesperson told Engadget the new limit is “part of our commitment to building a healthy service“ focusing on “stopping spam and abuse on Twitter“.
Building a healthy service
To what extent the new rule will stop spam accounts from follower-churning remains to be seen – after all, 400 follows per day is still a large allowance.
Twitter has been making a concerted effort over the last few years to clean up the platform, with a particular focus on 'fake news' and abusive tweets, having recently introducing a feature that flags Tweets that violate its rules.
