If you attempt to follow an account and see a prompt that says You are unable to follow more people at this time, there are two likely scenarios:
- Your account may be locked. We may lock an account, which prohibits actions like following, if it appears to be compromised or if it is in violation of the Twitter Rules or Terms of Service.
- You may have hit a follow limit. Twitter has imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system strain and to limit abuse. Read more about follow limits below.
Twitter’s technical follow limits:
- Every account can follow 5,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 5,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following; this ratio is not published. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is subject to limits, even high profile and API accounts.
- Every Twitter account is technically unable to follow more than 1,000 users per day, in addition to the account-based limits above. Please note that this is just a technical limit to prevent egregious abuse from spam accounts.
What to do if you’ve hit a follow limit:
If you’ve reached the account-based follow limit (5,000 users), you’ll need to wait until you yourself have more followers before you can follow additional users. Follow limits are system-wide; Support cannot remove or adjust your follow limits.
To follow one or two additional users, unfollow a few accounts you’re currently following. Please note, however, that regularly following and unfollowing many accounts at a time is a violation of the Twitter Rules and can result in account suspension.
Why Twitter limits following behavior:
These limits help us improve site performance and reliability and help us make Twitter a nice place for everyone.
What to expect if you’re “whitelisted”:
Some API administrators have whitelist status so that their applications can function without hitting system limits for direct messages and API requests per hour. Whitelisting does not increase the follow limits and all accounts are subject to the same follow limits and rules.
For more information on Multi Channel Network’s and Twitter Help please check back weekly or subscribe here.
