On Friday, March 9, Twitter users woke up to a big change when  they scrolled through their feeds as the social media plattform decided to suspend many popular accounts after they were found guilty of tweetdecking.

Tweetdecking is named after Twitter accounts with large followings who are apart of secret groups, known as ‘decks,’ who make money off of selling retweets and giving others the chance to go viral. Those who are apart of the deck work together to schedule the sharing and reposting of each others tweets, though most of their humorous content is actually stolen from smaller accounts. Many of these mega accounts have amassed millions of followers by using these plagiarized ideas, and have made thousands of dollars each month by the press of a retweet button.

To combat this growing issue on their site, Twitter decided to suspend many of these popular accounts like @Dory, @CommonWhiteGirl, @SoDamnTrue and many others who have profited off of stolen tweets and given others the unfair advantage of formatted virality. This came after an updated set of Twitter policies deeming all tweetdecking accounts as spam, and banning them from their site.

Many applauded the social media’s decision to make major steps in putting an end to the unfair phenomenon, especially those who have had their tweets go viral on different pages without getting paid a cent. Others, like the former owners of the tweetdecking accounts, posted to their new twitter accounts mourning the loss of their mass followings.

While it is unclear if this suspension will change the culture of tweetdecking in the future, many see it as a hopeful sign that this practice of stealing and buying tweets will come to an end soon.