Twitter gets buggier: Followers don’t display, users restricted in error

Since the earliest days of Twitter, the easiest way to find out more about an account was to look beyond its tweets and dig deeper into who follows that account and who that account is following. Now, users are discovering that Twitter seems to either be glitching or intentionally limiting access to the complete lists of any given user's followers or who they are following.

Ars easily replicated the error by clicking on various accounts and finding that Twitter only showed a partial list of accounts a user follows or is following. For Twitter owner Elon Musk's account, for example, instead of seeing all 339 accounts he follows, Twitter only showed 64 accounts. Currently, it seems that users can only review complete lists of their own followers and following lists.

It's likely that Twitter is simply glitching, but it's possible that the company is planning to restrict who can view an account's followers and following lists, potentially reserving that privilege for paid subscribers someday. Earlier this month, the @TitterDaily account confirmed that the ability to direct message accounts that don't follow you would be restricted to paid Twitter subscribers.

Twitter responded to Ars' request to clarify whether this is a bug or a feature with its signature auto-response poop emoji.

While it's annoying and possibly impedes research to only be able to view partial lists of an account's followers or following activity, more frustrating glitches on the platform are threatening to temporarily block average Twitter users from accessing core functions on the platform.

Starting yesterday, some users began reporting that Twitter is randomly restricting their accounts from following, liking, and retweeting for three days, supposedly after they violated Twitter's spam policy. These users claim that Twitter took this action after they blocked ads or simply tweeted a few times.

Ars attempted to reach one user, Robert Dale Smith, a software engineer who was sent a spam violation notice but said that Twitter didn't seem to actually be limiting his use of the platform. Smith did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment, but he speculated on Twitter that the issue is due to a bug.

It's now clear that Smith was correct, and users were receiving Twitter spam violation notices in error.

Seemingly to counter the ongoing issue of Twitter glitches, @TitterDaily last week announced that Twitter launched a Community called "x bugs" to allow users to report bugs.

"Twitter staff are now testing using Communities as a way to gather feedback about the platform," TitterDaily reported. "Join this community and help report bugs and share feedback."

As of this writing, "x bugs" has approximately 1,000 members and is being moderated by two Twitter engineers. The admin is Twitter designer Andrea Conway, whose personal website says she is "currently on the 2.0 team leading design for Core Products."

On the "x bugs" community, Conway responded to a user, @NIBLEM__, who asked, "What is happening? Lot of original accounts are getting 3 day ban."

"Apologies, there was an issue last night, the team's looking into it," Conway responded.

While Twitter quietly looks into a fix, spam violation notices could lead users to change their behaviors, potentially decreasing engagement on the platform at a time when Twitter owner Elon Musk has been trying to launch new features to spike engagement in any way he can.