Twitter said it is taking “additional steps to ensure that our developer platform works in service of the overall health of the conversation on Twitter”.

The comments come as the company recognises “the challenges facing Twitter and the public”, from spam and malicious automation to surveillance and invasions of privacy. Facebook has also cited similar issues among the challenges it faces.

Twitter said that between April and June 2018, it removed more than 143,000 apps which violated its policies. It said it is continuing to invest in improved tools and processes to help stop malicious apps faster, and is introducing a new way for developers to request access to Twitter’s APIs.

As of now, all new requests to access the service’s standard and premium APIs must go through a registration process. While acknowledging that this “adds a few steps and some additional time”, the company said it is committed to supporting developers looking to build “high-quality, policy-compliant experiences” using its developer platform, while “reducing the impact of bad actors on our service”.

Eventually, all developers will be required to create an account in order to maintain apps, although Twitter said it will give notice before this is the case. And the number of apps which can be registered by a single developer account is being restricted to 10: developers who need support for more can request permission.

The company is also placing limits on the ability for apps to create tweets, retweets, likes, follows and direct messages. It said that this represents a “significant decrease” in the levels of activity allowed, although policy-compliant developers can maintain existing levels of access or gain elevated access through a new request process.

It said these changes will help cut down on the ability to create spam on Twitter using its APIs, while still supporting the ability to build or grow an app or business “to meaningful scale”.

The company is conducting policy reviews of potentially impacted apps and will contact eligible developers with instructions on how to request elevated access early in September.

And finally, it is introducing a new option for users to report suspected violations of its platform policies for review. A ‘report a bad app’ option is available in the Help Center, to report uses of the API which produce spam, invade user privacy, or otherwise violate the rules.