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Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messagin

Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messaging celebs who don't follow them back

65827 10y ago
This is what I was going to post, seems to be about 90% of the activity on twitter. They seem to only care about the experience from the perspective of the haves, anyone else just isn't part of the conversation.
- jsonne 10y ago
  I think this is a good example of how optimizing for the power user, at a large scale, can actually be detrimental.
  - xadhominemx 10y ago
    How do you know that? The changes have not yet taken effect.
    - Drumlin 10y ago
      One of the main problems with Twitter is people sign up and don't know what to do with it - except message famous people. If Twitter prevents the plebs from shouting at the intelligentsia then it will make the platform even more irrelevant. The last time I used it, it was like talking into a void and that was with hundreds of real followers.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Nothing's going to change for these users, though. Their shouting at random celebs will go unseen, as it always has.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Yea thats pretty much all twitter is. I think of all the people tweeting politicians etc.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  I've got a good stable of local folks with interests that match mine. Plenty of interesting conversations to be had - who you follow is up to you.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    I wonder how many people are like you, as a percentage of the total.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  There are enough people talking to each other to make it interesting, at least for me. But the issue that most people are having is political nuts who just go around doing a search for "Donald Trump" or whoever and then abusing anyone who said anything remotely critical. Even worse are the actual white supremacists who do that or worse. The bots are a problem as well, but they aren't what runs people off the platform.
FussyZeus 10y ago
I'd imagine there's another element to it, probably ratio of that versus what they'd define as "regular use."
WillyOnWheels 10y ago
If you tweet 100s of times the same text at accounts that don't follow you, you're a bot.
- usrusr 10y ago
  Except when Twitter makes that a heuristic for detecting bots, then they'll soon stop tweeting the same text twice.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    Yes, they'll need an adaptive system. This is a (mostly) solved problem already - just look at your Gmail spam folder.
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      Are you suggesting to get a Gmail account, turn on the setting that makes Twitter email you notifications, mark tweets as spam in Gmail, and then use Google's spam detection as an existence proof of a solution if it's successful?
      - mod 10y ago
        No, he's saying people by-and-large can't defeat Gmail's spam detection. The same will likely happen at twitter.
        slig 10y ago
        > The same will likely happen at twitter. It took them years to let users upload images (when there was a clear demand and parasite services grew out of this) and there's obvious spam accounts that could've shadow banned with very simple heuristics. So I don't think this is going to happen.
        ceejayoz 10y ago
chc 10y ago
That sounds like an informal description of a heuristic to flag accounts as potentially abusive rather than a specific rule with a specific punishment.
jsemrau 10y ago
That got me banned a couple of weeks ago. I wrote an application that recommended an event to the user once he\she would tweet "I am bored". I made the mistake by giving providing a fall back once the location could not be determined. This lead to ~40 tweets with identical texts. Twitter quickly pulled out the banhammer. Not to spam, but here is a write-up if there is an interest in what and how it happened: https://hackernoon.com/how-i-got-myself-banned-on-twitter-43427b099418#.g7e98pcn7 https://hackernoon.com/how-i-got-myself-banned-on-twitter-43...
- feelix 10y ago
  Any chance of sharing/providing the source code of the listener bot that auto responds?
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    The listener is a pretty much off the shelf Tweepy listener writing into a Redis queue. For the recommendation is comes via an API where I can't share the code.
pmiller2 10y ago
So much for the strategy of tweeting at a company to resolve consumer disputes. Normally, I would say that's a good thing, but sometimes these companies just don't respond to non-public channels. Google, for instance, is notorious for making it difficult to reach an actual human in customer service.

Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messaging celebs who don't follow them back

65827 10y ago

This is what I was going to post, seems to be about 90% of the activity on twitter. They seem to only care about the experience from the perspective of the haves, anyone else just isn't part of the conversation.

jsonne 10y ago
I think this is a good example of how optimizing for the power user, at a large scale, can actually be detrimental.
- xadhominemx 10y ago
  How do you know that? The changes have not yet taken effect.
  - Drumlin 10y ago
    One of the main problems with Twitter is people sign up and don't know what to do with it - except message famous people. If Twitter prevents the plebs from shouting at the intelligentsia then it will make the platform even more irrelevant. The last time I used it, it was like talking into a void and that was with hundreds of real followers.
ceejayoz 10y ago
Nothing's going to change for these users, though. Their shouting at random celebs will go unseen, as it always has.

Mendenhall 10y ago

Yea thats pretty much all twitter is. I think of all the people tweeting politicians etc.

ceejayoz 10y ago
I've got a good stable of local folks with interests that match mine. Plenty of interesting conversations to be had - who you follow is up to you.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I wonder how many people are like you, as a percentage of the total.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
There are enough people talking to each other to make it interesting, at least for me. But the issue that most people are having is political nuts who just go around doing a search for "Donald Trump" or whoever and then abusing anyone who said anything remotely critical. Even worse are the actual white supremacists who do that or worse. The bots are a problem as well, but they aren't what runs people off the platform.

FussyZeus 10y ago

I'd imagine there's another element to it, probably ratio of that versus what they'd define as "regular use."

WillyOnWheels 10y ago

If you tweet 100s of times the same text at accounts that don't follow you, you're a bot.

usrusr 10y ago
Except when Twitter makes that a heuristic for detecting bots, then they'll soon stop tweeting the same text twice.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Yes, they'll need an adaptive system. This is a (mostly) solved problem already - just look at your Gmail spam folder.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Are you suggesting to get a Gmail account, turn on the setting that makes Twitter email you notifications, mark tweets as spam in Gmail, and then use Google's spam detection as an existence proof of a solution if it's successful?
    - mod 10y ago
      No, he's saying people by-and-large can't defeat Gmail's spam detection. The same will likely happen at twitter.
      - slig 10y ago
        > The same will likely happen at twitter. It took them years to let users upload images (when there was a clear demand and parasite services grew out of this) and there's obvious spam accounts that could've shadow banned with very simple heuristics. So I don't think this is going to happen.
        ceejayoz 10y ago

chc 10y ago

That sounds like an informal description of a heuristic to flag accounts as potentially abusive rather than a specific rule with a specific punishment.

jsemrau 10y ago

That got me banned a couple of weeks ago. I wrote an application that recommended an event to the user once he\she would tweet "I am bored". I made the mistake by giving providing a fall back once the location could not be determined. This lead to ~40 tweets with identical texts. Twitter quickly pulled out the banhammer. Not to spam, but here is a write-up if there is an interest in what and how it happened: https://hackernoon.com/how-i-got-myself-banned-on-twitter-43427b099418#.g7e98pcn7 https://hackernoon.com/how-i-got-myself-banned-on-twitter-43...

feelix 10y ago
Any chance of sharing/providing the source code of the listener bot that auto responds?
- jsemrau 10y ago
  The listener is a pretty much off the shelf Tweepy listener writing into a Redis queue. For the recommendation is comes via an API where I can't share the code.

pmiller2 10y ago

So much for the strategy of tweeting at a company to resolve consumer disputes. Normally, I would say that's a good thing, but sometimes these companies just don't respond to non-public channels. Google, for instance, is notorious for making it difficult to reach an actual human in customer service.