boris and natash moose and squirrel russian trolls
You're tweeting in Bulgarian Cyrillic? You must be a Russian bot!

A week ago, Twitter announced it would become more aggressive in pursuing trolls on its service, a move which seems to have had some unforeseen consequences, judging by the present upheaval in the Bulgarian Twitter community. An increasingly large and unhappy number of people have had their Twitter accounts suspended and messages filtered out of conversations, apparently for the offense of merely tweeting in Cyrillic.

twitter in cyrillic
Though the trigger for an account to be suspended hasn't been specifically established, the prevailing hypothesis - based on users' experience - appears to be that mentioning @YouTube or any other major account in Cyrillic will get one in trouble. Perversely, even if the initial tweeter isn't affected, the chances of being suspended for anyone replying to such a tweet in Cyrillic are even higher. This problem has afflicted people with accounts dating all the way back to 2009, some of which have multiple thousands of followers. While I've been able to verify the experience primarily of Bulgarian users, this blight on Cyrillic Twitter use definitely appears to extend beyond just that community.

Why is this happening? The most likely explanation is that Twitter has ramped up its algorithms for weeding out Russian bots and trolls, and since Russians use Cyrillic, the very use of the alphabet is being treated as a red flag. Except, you know, Bulgarians invented the Cyrillic script. It's used in a bunch of Slavic countries outside Russia, and even within Russia, not everyone is actually a troll.