Twitter shuts down Fame for unspecified ToS violation

The Twitter documentation forbids mass following and mass unfollowing. Spam of course is the main reason for this - not just blatant spam but people who follow hundreds of accounts to generate "is now following you" emails, and periodically purge people who didn't follow back. Still, Fame is entirely opt-in so it's not really clear to me what they didn't like about it.<p>Two guesses:<p>1. it triggered or messed with automatic spam prevention heuristics.<p>2. it's all fun and games until Fame tries to monetize the mass following, and they wanted preempt that.

"This is one of the great tensions of the web era we are living in and increasingly so as the open web grows. We actually don't violate any particular rule, it was simply an arbitrary decision that we aren't aligned with the spirit of what they want."<p>I found this quote interesting, particular the phrase "open web". A single site like Twitter, which can arbitrarily shut down accounts based on alleged TOS violations, seems very distinct from a truly open, federated web.

What's the difference between this and a real person retweeting what the winner says?

"Twitter has informed us that we are violating the spirit of their TOS."<p>"We actually don't violate any particular rule, it was simply an arbitrary decision that we aren't aligned with the spirit of what they want."<p>Keep it classy!