Twitter's announced a new set of policies aimed at countering election interference.
In an update to its rules, the company lists a whole new set of behaviors that can get an account banned. Using a stock or stolen avatar photo, a stolen or copied profile bio will now be deemed suspicious, along with giving deliberately misleading profile information, including profile location.
Twitter is also expanding the policy that sees it getting rid of accounts that come from the same source as others that have been suspended for rule-breaking in the past.
"We are expanding our enforcement approach to include accounts that deliberately mimic or are intended to replace accounts we have previously suspended for violating our rules," the company's head of trust and safety Del Harvey and head of site integrity Yoel Roth explain.
It means banned users won't be able to get their followers to carry on posting the same stuff that got them banned.
And Twitter will take action against any account taking responsibility for a hack, threatening a hack, or encouraging others to carry one out.
With the mid-term elections rapidly approaching, Twitter's already been closing accounts down left right and center - it removed 770 in August that it believes to have originated in Iran. In the same month, it took down 50 accounts purporting to belong to members of various state Republican parties.
"We have also taken action on tweets sharing media regarding elections and political issues with misleading or incorrect party affiliation information," it says.
"We continue to partner closely with the RNC, DNC, and state election institutions to improve how we handle these issues," it says.
And in September, it 'challenged' an average of 9.4 million spammy, automated accounts each week - many of which concerned politics rather than knock-off goods.
This is just the latest in a series of moves by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft and others to stop the spread of fake news and misinformation on their sites - and what it actually shows is that these measures are failing. There wouldn't be any need for more changes if they weren't.
The truth is that it's simply impossible to police these sites entirely, in near enough real-time to have a major effect. All they can do is keep on finding new changes to make until the mid-term elections are safely over - and hope the same issues don't get as much attention next time.
