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Spamming Twitter Is Now Easier Than Ever

9 points by wheels 18y ago

geuis 18y ago
You can't spam on Twitter. The reason I say this, and some will disagree, is based on where your attention stream is. In your inbox, that's where your attention stream exists. When something new pops in, you check. The reason email spam works is because it inserts itself into your stream. Whether you actually go and click through on whatever's it is your own damn fault though. The reason that "spam" in the context of email can't exist on Twitter is precisely because you have an on/off switch for who's allowed to post into your attention stream. I used to follow Robert Scoble because he's interesting. But yammers on constantly about the most inane crap that it completely floods out the interesting stuff. Its like the man has ADD and a neural mind-reading prosthesis hooked up to a keyboard. Anyway, the point was that he was "spamming" me in a way, so I turned him off. Instantly my attention stream went from murky and muddy to useful again.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  I think the issue is more that they're polluting the social network and the quality of links. I'd bet that most of the "followers" that these bots attract are other bots that auto-follow anyone who follows them. Nevertheless, that increases the number of pages with a link to their site, from a high page-ranked site, and thus they profit. That's obnoxious and rude, to say the least. This kind of noise isn't nearly as offensive to the service-user as email spam (for exactly the reasons you mentioned). However, Twitter could potentially be an interesting data set for study and experimentation, and these schmucks are souring the integrity of that data. Link-spamming is basically just a special case of this kind of general data-abuse.
- axod 18y ago
  "You can't spam on Twitter." OK, Here's one dead simple way to spam on twitter. 1. Create *another* twitter client 2. Get lots of people using your twitter client 3. Once you have enough users details, start spamming using all of the login details Nothing is immune to spam.
jballanc 18y ago
Ok, so let me get this straight... Spammer on Twitter: "Hey, let me tell you all about these products I want to sell you!" Me: "No" Spammer: "..." What's that? Oh, yeah, I didn't follow the spammer, SO I NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN! Does that mean that there won't be twitter spam? that spammers won't target twitter? Of course not... ...but personally, I welcome twitter spam! Please, bring it on! Spam is all about finding that sucker born in the last minute who will buy your breast enlarging viagra penis pump. The only way to be spammed on twitter is to be enough of a sucker to follow someone trying to sell you stuff. Sounds like a match made in heaven.
herval 18y ago
I never got any spam on Twitter. Get a dozen follower invitations once in a while, when I post something, from people I never heard of (spam bots, probably). So I just ignore them. Don't even bother reading their profiles to check if they're actual interesting people or just bots trying to sell me stuff to enlarge specific parts of my body...

9 points by wheels 18y ago

geuis 18y ago

You can't spam on Twitter. The reason I say this, and some will disagree, is based on where your attention stream is. In your inbox, that's where your attention stream exists. When something new pops in, you check. The reason email spam works is because it inserts itself into your stream. Whether you actually go and click through on whatever's it is your own damn fault though. The reason that "spam" in the context of email can't exist on Twitter is precisely because you have an on/off switch for who's allowed to post into your attention stream. I used to follow Robert Scoble because he's interesting. But yammers on constantly about the most inane crap that it completely floods out the interesting stuff. Its like the man has ADD and a neural mind-reading prosthesis hooked up to a keyboard. Anyway, the point was that he was "spamming" me in a way, so I turned him off. Instantly my attention stream went from murky and muddy to useful again.

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
I think the issue is more that they're polluting the social network and the quality of links. I'd bet that most of the "followers" that these bots attract are other bots that auto-follow anyone who follows them. Nevertheless, that increases the number of pages with a link to their site, from a high page-ranked site, and thus they profit. That's obnoxious and rude, to say the least. This kind of noise isn't nearly as offensive to the service-user as email spam (for exactly the reasons you mentioned). However, Twitter could potentially be an interesting data set for study and experimentation, and these schmucks are souring the integrity of that data. Link-spamming is basically just a special case of this kind of general data-abuse.
axod 18y ago
"You can't spam on Twitter." OK, Here's one dead simple way to spam on twitter. 1. Create *another* twitter client 2. Get lots of people using your twitter client 3. Once you have enough users details, start spamming using all of the login details Nothing is immune to spam.

jballanc 18y ago

Ok, so let me get this straight... Spammer on Twitter: "Hey, let me tell you all about these products I want to sell you!" Me: "No" Spammer: "..." What's that? Oh, yeah, I didn't follow the spammer, SO I NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN! Does that mean that there won't be twitter spam? that spammers won't target twitter? Of course not... ...but personally, I welcome twitter spam! Please, bring it on! Spam is all about finding that sucker born in the last minute who will buy your breast enlarging viagra penis pump. The only way to be spammed on twitter is to be enough of a sucker to follow someone trying to sell you stuff. Sounds like a match made in heaven.

herval 18y ago

I never got any spam on Twitter. Get a dozen follower invitations once in a while, when I post something, from people I never heard of (spam bots, probably). So I just ignore them. Don't even bother reading their profiles to check if they're actual interesting people or just bots trying to sell me stuff to enlarge specific parts of my body...