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Instead of manually finding interesting people on my niche, I set my criteria and let my program do the dirty work for me. What's wrong with it? I don't even s

Instead of manually finding interesting people on my niche, I set my criteria and let my program do the dirty work for me. What's wrong with it? I don't even spam people. I send one link to my site per every 5 witty and inspirational quotes. A few people that I met over there have contributed to my site as guest bloggers. I am not doing anything evil - just automating something that I would hate to do manually.

swombat 16y ago
You're a waste of space. I hope your accounts all get suspended. Witty and inspirational quotes? Wow, I guess your followers should feel blessed to find themselves at the receiving end of your awesome RSS'ed wisdom. Spammers like you end up making people judge Twitter as "more spam" and giving it up before they've really tried it properly. Your followers are probably more likely than normal users to give up Twitter because it's just pointless noise. Simple utilitarian argument against what you're doing: if 10% of the Twitter population did what you do, Twitter would become mostly useless. I really hope they write scripts to detect and ban you.
- akadien 16y ago
  For the sake of pointing out the obvious, Twitter already is mostly useless. Anything the previous poster can do to destroy the remainder, I'm all in favor of.
  - daleharvey 16y ago
    you are in favour of startups being actively ruined because you dont personally find them useful?
    - akadien 16y ago
      In general, no.
- axod 16y ago
  You should be angry at twitter. They have made a spammers paradise. Any blame should rest with them IMHO.
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    Families of murder victims should be angry at gun companies. They make murder weapons. Any blame should rest with them IMHO.
- iamelgringo 16y ago
  Dude, the ad hominem is really out of line.
  - swombat 16y ago
    An ad hominem, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument toward the person" or "argument against the person"), is an attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise. The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy. It's not an ad hominem, it's an outright insult. I am not attacking his character to win an unrelated argument. I am just attacking his character.
    - iamelgringo 16y ago
      We're trying to keep the level of discourse high, here, remember? Especially since we're defenders of HN. :) http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html I'd suggest vigorously arguing his ideas, not his character. I'd actually be really interested in reading a vigorous discussion of "To bot or not to bot" as it relates to twitter, Facebook and Buzz. I think discussing where the line is between automating specific marketing tasks and spamming lies is a really interesting question. I'd really enjoy reading both of you vigorously defend your oppposing points of view. But, this discussion has now degenerated into insults which robs me of the potential insights that both of you might have on the situation. I feel that posting insults also communicates to noob HN readers that insults are okay in this community, when in fact, it's not. One of the reasons that people like you and I have felt compelled to heavily invest our time here over the years is because we've generally managed to keep insulting comments at bay. :)
      - swombat 16y ago
        That's true. You make a good point. Ok, I'll avoid devolving to insults in the future (though for this specific conversation it's a bit late). Thanks for taking the time to make that point.
        16y ago
pavel_lishin 16y ago
You're killing the signal-to-noise ratio.

swombat 16y ago

You're a waste of space. I hope your accounts all get suspended. Witty and inspirational quotes? Wow, I guess your followers should feel blessed to find themselves at the receiving end of your awesome RSS'ed wisdom. Spammers like you end up making people judge Twitter as "more spam" and giving it up before they've really tried it properly. Your followers are probably more likely than normal users to give up Twitter because it's just pointless noise. Simple utilitarian argument against what you're doing: if 10% of the Twitter population did what you do, Twitter would become mostly useless. I really hope they write scripts to detect and ban you.

akadien 16y ago
For the sake of pointing out the obvious, Twitter already is mostly useless. Anything the previous poster can do to destroy the remainder, I'm all in favor of.
- daleharvey 16y ago
  you are in favour of startups being actively ruined because you dont personally find them useful?
  - akadien 16y ago
    In general, no.
axod 16y ago
You should be angry at twitter. They have made a spammers paradise. Any blame should rest with them IMHO.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Families of murder victims should be angry at gun companies. They make murder weapons. Any blame should rest with them IMHO.
iamelgringo 16y ago
Dude, the ad hominem is really out of line.
- swombat 16y ago
  An ad hominem, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument toward the person" or "argument against the person"), is an attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise. The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy. It's not an ad hominem, it's an outright insult. I am not attacking his character to win an unrelated argument. I am just attacking his character.
  - iamelgringo 16y ago
    We're trying to keep the level of discourse high, here, remember? Especially since we're defenders of HN. :) http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html I'd suggest vigorously arguing his ideas, not his character. I'd actually be really interested in reading a vigorous discussion of "To bot or not to bot" as it relates to twitter, Facebook and Buzz. I think discussing where the line is between automating specific marketing tasks and spamming lies is a really interesting question. I'd really enjoy reading both of you vigorously defend your oppposing points of view. But, this discussion has now degenerated into insults which robs me of the potential insights that both of you might have on the situation. I feel that posting insults also communicates to noob HN readers that insults are okay in this community, when in fact, it's not. One of the reasons that people like you and I have felt compelled to heavily invest our time here over the years is because we've generally managed to keep insulting comments at bay. :)
    - swombat 16y ago
      That's true. You make a good point. Ok, I'll avoid devolving to insults in the future (though for this specific conversation it's a bit late). Thanks for taking the time to make that point.
      - 16y ago

pavel_lishin 16y ago

You're killing the signal-to-noise ratio.