3 ms·

I suppose people from Twitter will read this. You guys have a bigger problem to deal with than this disastrous change to Block. I Protected my account in prot

I suppose people from Twitter will read this. You guys have a bigger problem to deal with than this disastrous change to Block. I Protected my account in protest tonight. And did it just in the nick of time -- over 1800 Follower requests poured in. My account was bombed again by fake Followers. This is the third time it's happened. It took over a month for Twitter to delete over 10,000 fake Followers I was bombed with the first time. And they still haven't deleted the latest ~2,000 from a few weeks ago. And now tonight it happened again. Twitter needs to get its priorities straight -- and changing Block is not that priority. Stopping the fake Follower bombing should be. [typo edit]

CDRdude 13y ago
I'm not familiar enough with Twitter, apparently. Why is having fake followers bad?
- mikecane 13y ago
  It creates havoc with all the services that create metrics about Twitter. It's also bad for Twitter in terms of selling advertising based on user numbers. If advertisers, say, want to target people with N Followers, how can they be sure those numbers are actual people and not fake bot accounts?
GrinningFool 13y ago
How do fake followers affect your ability to use twitter? Too, this problem you've described isn't one that seems common - at least a google search only turns up your comments about it. Given this, it seems the priorities are about right...
- mikecane 13y ago
  No, I'm just the one who has screamed the loudest about it. Most others suffer in silence. Popehat was Follower bombed too: http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/17/spam-attack-immediately-follows-post-on-brett-kimberlin/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/17/spam-attack-immediately-fo... http://www.popehat.com/2009/12/07/it-says-a-lot-about-twitter/ http://www.popehat.com/2009/12/07/it-says-a-lot-about-twitte...
__pThrow 13y ago
I don't understand I guess, how did the change to how block work allow 1800 follower requests in that the old way block worked kept out?
- mikecane 13y ago
  Someone who was bombing my account saw my announcement that I was going to Protect my account and tried to bomb it before I did. I was faster and the fake Followers wound up in a request queue. Now that Twitter has restored Block, my account is again UnProtected and those 1,800+ are now automatically added to my Follower count. [typo edit]

CDRdude 13y ago

I'm not familiar enough with Twitter, apparently. Why is having fake followers bad?

mikecane 13y ago
It creates havoc with all the services that create metrics about Twitter. It's also bad for Twitter in terms of selling advertising based on user numbers. If advertisers, say, want to target people with N Followers, how can they be sure those numbers are actual people and not fake bot accounts?

GrinningFool 13y ago

How do fake followers affect your ability to use twitter? Too, this problem you've described isn't one that seems common - at least a google search only turns up your comments about it. Given this, it seems the priorities are about right...

mikecane 13y ago
No, I'm just the one who has screamed the loudest about it. Most others suffer in silence. Popehat was Follower bombed too: http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/17/spam-attack-immediately-follows-post-on-brett-kimberlin/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/17/spam-attack-immediately-fo... http://www.popehat.com/2009/12/07/it-says-a-lot-about-twitter/ http://www.popehat.com/2009/12/07/it-says-a-lot-about-twitte...

__pThrow 13y ago

I don't understand I guess, how did the change to how block work allow 1800 follower requests in that the old way block worked kept out?

mikecane 13y ago
Someone who was bombing my account saw my announcement that I was going to Protect my account and tried to bomb it before I did. I was faster and the fake Followers wound up in a request queue. Now that Twitter has restored Block, my account is again UnProtected and those 1,800+ are now automatically added to my Follower count. [typo edit]