Twitter is making moves to fight spam and malicious automation. 

The company posted a blog entry that detailed the actions being taken, which mostly focus on combatting spam or fake accounts. 

In May 2018, Twitter's systems identified more than 9.9 million accounts that could be spammy or automated. Twitter is also removing 214 per cent more accounts that violate the platform's spam policies. 

Twitter also noted a drop in the number of reports recieved for spam accounts - dropping from approximately 25,000 per day in March to 17,000 in May. 

Real followers, real metrics

To further fight the fraud, Twitter has begun to update account metrics in real time. Now, if an account looks suspicious, Twitter can put it in to a 'read only' state while they investigate.  

Twitter will also attach a warning to accounts that are in 'read only' mode, as well as stop other accounts from following it in the meantime.

If the account is not considered spam by Twitter's team, its footprint will be completely restored.

This means that some Twitter users may see their own follower counts fluctuating more often, but it's also an important step towards combatting fake accounts. 

Sign in please

Twitter is also adding more hoops to its initial signup process. The site will requre the confirmation of an email address or phone number before they can use an account. While this is a pretty standard practice on a lot of sites, Twitter hasn't required this particular action until now. 

Hashtag spam

Hold on to your event livetweeting for a second because Twitter is also taking a look at that. Accounts that are caught tweeting more frequently than usual with the same hashtag attached will be temporarily locked down. We definitely didn't learn that one during E3. Nope. 

A reCAPTCHA or re-entering the account password will get you back on your way. 

The site is also urging users to enable two-factor authentication, and regularly review which third party applications have access and posting permission to their accounts.