> Spam (and scam) detection in social networks is hard. Just a question. What's the true harm in letting even obvious spammers spam as much as they want on th

> Spam (and scam) detection in social networks is hard. Just a question. What's the true harm in letting even obvious spammers spam as much as they want on their social media profiles? Let them waste their time. Social media is a bit different than a message board where everybody is burdened by any spam that's posted because you have to follow somebody intentionally to see their idiocy on social media. If somebody wants to post 100 ads for viagra a day on some dumb Twitter bot profile, who is actually going to follow them other than maybe other bots? You really only have to worry about cleaning up the search results to ensure that the spam is hidden from standard searches. The only person who should be upset about random bot spam on social media is the advertiser that might have paid a lot of money for loads of low-quality ad impressions. Well, doesn't it follow that the advertising payment system and business model is the real issue here, not automating spam detection? Somewhere in the process, social media has to ensure that advertisers aren't paying for bot impressions. It's not necessarily the spam itself that's the real issue.