I agree that Twitter can make some moves to combat spam. CAPTCHA is not the way to go though. It's already been highlighted as a major accessibility block to social networking sites and is definitely overused. An easy "report spam" option and similar measures would be better.
Nicholas Tolson
· 1 year ago
Not sure CAPTCHA will do it, but not sure what is required. I've noticed a big jump in spammy commercial followers just in the last 24 hours. But really, who wouldn't want to know about airbrush tanning offers on Twitter? http://twitter.com/jtnt/statuses/789071987
Kristen
· 1 year ago
It is sad but I think you're right. A captcha just might be in order. I was out of town over the weekend and came home to 25 new followers. Most of which were totally spam. Just plain stinks.
Mark Evans
· 1 year ago
You know that you've really made it when the spammers start paying attention. :) This looks like an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur, although the Web being what it is, few people would actually want to pay for an anti-spam tool.
Peder Hanson
· 1 year ago
another possibility is to separate personal from commercial accounts. then let users choose if they want to let businesses follow them.
Ben Kessler
· 1 year ago
I don't really consider getting a mass amount of followers spam. Why? Because I'm not following them, and I can't see what they are spewing out. I choose only to follow friends, colleagues and those who I am interested in seeing what they are up to.
Either way, adding a required CAPTCHA for every time you follow someone seems like it wouldn't be too mind boggling to implement and I don't think I would mind it so much.
MkChronos
· 1 year ago
I'm not sure how big of a problem it can really become. The beauty of Twitter is that I have to choose to follow people, and if it gets too "noisy", I can just stop.
Take for example the recent notice of the Twitter account that was for sale on E-Bay. How good will it really be at the first sign of spamming? A simple no follow and you're off (as well as block).
But I must say I do like the idea of the CAPTCHA for a follow, that might prove a useful impedance instead of a bot just choosing follows all day. Has the request already been put in to the developers?
blueflame
· 1 year ago
Twitter has the option allow only people who want to follow you... maybe it's something like creating a pool of people waiting to be approved. So, sending out a condensed, "digest." of your requests with a snapshot of follower/followee ratio could be helpful?
Anyway, I've been in various discussions trying to figure out what to call it. I first called it Spam + Twitter = "Spit" and the person doing is called a Spitter. Someone else came up with, "spwit" thoughts? http://www.chrispalle.com/2008/04/14/spammers-o...
m0nk3y
· 1 year ago
Twam?
sarah stewart
· 1 year ago
Hi there, I am fairly new to Twitter so got very excited last night to see I had a number of followers. Fame, at last, I thought. I'll be getting invitations to be a key note speaker next! So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw that many were spam. My question on behalf of newbie twitter users is: how do I recognise spam apart from the obvious accounts belonging to hot, Russion women seeking a caring husband? cheers Sarah
Honoo Flammen
· 1 year ago
Instead of a CAPTCHA, how about a "Report Spam" link next to people on your followers list. If enough people mark an account as a spammer, it gets removed from everyone's followers list.
That, along with either disabling or a staggered delayed new-follower notification would curb the "unwanted followers" thing.
Perhaps also have a soft limit on the number of follows that a person can make in a span of time. Most people build a list of follows over time and not all at once, I'd suspect. Spammers will try to follow everyone at once.
Pratik Patel
· 1 year ago
So long as the CAPCHA is accessible, I could love it. I don't want to have to fight another battle. Ev has done a fantastic job of making Twitter accessible; let's not ruin it.
Astarwithin
· 1 year ago
Convo I had w/ a very smart friend of mine. :)
[15:48] @fizzboy on twitter: I read the article [15:48] @astar_alone (me) on twitter: I do think they should do a captcha [15:48] A: I don't want bots in my flist even if it makes me look popular [15:49] F: captchas keep the [visually impaired] from being able to use the web [15:50] A: I think you can have them read aloud to you [15:50] F: and using the "block" link gets rid of unwanted followers [15:50] A: I'm blocking but it's still a pita to have to go through the whole list and take out people [15:51] F: i think you're worrying too much about them [15:51] A: I've got three [women of questionable moral fiber] on my flist right now that added yesterday [15:51] A: I don't want to have to go investigate every person who gets on my flist to see if they're legit or not [15:52] F: captchas can be easily evaded by spammers; they simply pay for humans to solve them farm the work out to overseas [15:52] A: ugh [15:52] F: yeah [15:52] F: again, i wouldn't worry about them, what does it matter who follows you [15:53] F: it's like complaining that someone friended you on LJ or something like that [15:53] F: since reciprocity is required to spam, it's pointless [15:54] F: that's what's made twitter so spam resistant [15:55] F: if anything, twitter should probably make the e-mail notifications off by default and have a Report Spammer link or something, make it work like gmail's spam filter [15:55] A: ah [15:55] A: see, that would be good [15:56] F: if enough people mark a person as a spammer, then the person gets removed from everyone's list [15:56] F: that's why gmail is so spam free [15:57] F: spam twitterers are much easier to identify than spam messages, so it'd be even easier to make it work that way.
Nick Schmidt
· 1 year ago
Interesting. I haven't seen any spam yet.. I hope not too..
Another place that is getting a lot of spam now is facebook. I get weird messages from models and etc. I hope its not going to turn into like myspace.com.
@Astarwithin. Good point. Thanks for the conversation.
@everyone else.. I never heard of CAPTCHA. Help me out...
Steven Smyth
· 1 year ago
I like the idea of a "Report SPAM" button. Obviously, Twitter should be left as open as possible. I do have the option of not re-following anyone I deem as annoying, but the community should decide if a person gets banned or not.
Twitter's email notification system was down - and thus you got them all at once. Other points still totally valid though.
Dallas Clark
· 1 year ago
I think report spam would be the best option!
Todd Mintz
· 1 year ago
I think that spammers will realize that their ROI on Twitter is pretty minimal and go back to their more traditional spamming methods (email, guestbooks, blog comments).
Mr. Ilarijs
· 1 year ago
I don't think, that all spam is bad. Internet scam and fraud is much worse...
SuccessVirus.com
· 1 year ago
CAPTCHA would be a nightmare, just consider the plugin for wordpress that sends my blogupdates to my twitter account. That would become a desaster with those CAPTCHAS!
Stop Twitter Spam
· 1 year ago
It's good to see the visibility of this issue being raised with posts like this. A few things that I wanted to add:
1) If you feel that you are being spammed by someone, the best thing that you can do is block that user. You should also submit a 'spam report' here: http://twitter.com/help (select 'spam report' from the drop-down)
Twitter is using both of these methods to monitor spam on Twitter and they ARE taking action (terminating the account).
2) There is an active discussion going on at Get Satisfaction about the use of CAPTCHA when following new users. If you have thoughts/ideas on this please add your comments there. Twitter uses Get Satisfaction as their primary platform for these kinds of issues. http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/requi...
I voted yes for the poll since the question was: "Is it time for Twitter to move aggressively to prevent spammy accounts?"
I don't, however, think that captcha is the way to go, since people can still follow from their phones simply by sending 'follow username' via sms. They can also follow people through any of third-party apps that use the API by sending the same command. It will be tricky to implement the traditional web captcha through those channels.
Also, if it turns out that some form of captcha will be used, I think it should only be required if UserA follows UserB AND UserB does not yet follow UserA. Someone who chooses to reciprocate with a follow-back shouldn't have to jump through the same hoops.
Kevin
· 1 year ago
A lot of these spammers do it to try and grab people who still use "auto follow" - the setting where you automatically follow anyone who follows you. Simple disable that and I think a lot of perceived attractiveness for Tweet spammers would disappear.
That and CAPTCHA - I agree with everyone else, frsutrating the ability to use bots to mass follow would likely help a great deal.
Hdunce
· 1 year ago
There are 12 people following @thebible. NOW WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE PEOPLE ON TWITTER? OMYGODLESS.
The Tuesday Night Tech Show
· 1 year ago
Yes, Twitter--DO SOMETHING to stop this nonsense of the people who follow over FOUR THOUSAND people and then want to follow me. It's dumb, I won't follow them back and it just wastes time to go to the Twitter site to notice that these are bots. How about when they send the e-mail from a potential follower, it shows the actual stats of the person trying to follow you? It would save me a trip to the Twitter site to NOT follow them anyway.
Christine
· 1 year ago
The twitter spammers are missing the boat...reciprocity is required (as others here have mentioned) in order for the spam to be visible. So, let them follow us! It doesn't clutter up my stream, or have any impact upon my use of twitter. I never see their content.
The spam accounts and associated content will, however (a) clutter up the public stream, and (b) create some annoying extra traffic for twitter servers. But do that many folks really try to keep tabs on the public timeline?
David Shantz
· 4 months ago
Critical issue, covered insightfully by Mashable - as usual. How can Twitter survive even a year with out addressing it. Soon they will be using sophisticated tools to scour for duplicate messages/cross links and altering user agreements.
David Shantz
· 4 months ago
Critical issue, covered insightfully by Mashable - as usual. How can Twitter survive even a year with out addressing it. Soon they will be using sophisticated tools to scour for duplicate messages/cross links and altering user agreements.
David Shantz -Magnity
· 4 months ago
Critical issue, covered insightfully by Mashable - as usual. How can Twitter survive even a year with out addressing it. Soon they will be using sophisticated tools to scour for duplicate messages/cross links and altering user agreements.
All Comments
Either way, adding a required CAPTCHA for every time you follow someone seems like it wouldn't be too mind boggling to implement and I don't think I would mind it so much.
Take for example the recent notice of the Twitter account that was for sale on E-Bay. How good will it really be at the first sign of spamming? A simple no follow and you're off (as well as block).
But I must say I do like the idea of the CAPTCHA for a follow, that might prove a useful impedance instead of a bot just choosing follows all day. Has the request already been put in to the developers?
Anyway, I've been in various discussions trying to figure out what to call it. I first called it Spam + Twitter = "Spit" and the person doing is called a Spitter. Someone else came up with, "spwit" thoughts?
http://www.chrispalle.com/2008/04/14/spammers-o...
That, along with either disabling or a staggered delayed new-follower notification would curb the "unwanted followers" thing.
Perhaps also have a soft limit on the number of follows that a person can make in a span of time. Most people build a list of follows over time and not all at once, I'd suspect. Spammers will try to follow everyone at once.
[15:48] @fizzboy on twitter: I read the article
[15:48] @astar_alone (me) on twitter: I do think they should do a captcha
[15:48] A: I don't want bots in my flist even if it makes me look popular
[15:49] F: captchas keep the [visually impaired] from being able to use the web
[15:50] A: I think you can have them read aloud to you
[15:50] F: and using the "block" link gets rid of unwanted followers
[15:50] A: I'm blocking but it's still a pita to have to go through the whole list and take out people
[15:51] F: i think you're worrying too much about them
[15:51] A: I've got three [women of questionable moral fiber] on my flist right now that added yesterday
[15:51] A: I don't want to have to go investigate every person who gets on my flist to see if they're legit or not
[15:52] F: captchas can be easily evaded by spammers; they simply pay for humans to solve them farm the work out to overseas
[15:52] A: ugh
[15:52] F: yeah
[15:52] F: again, i wouldn't worry about them, what does it matter who follows you
[15:53] F: it's like complaining that someone friended you on LJ or something like that
[15:53] F: since reciprocity is required to spam, it's pointless
[15:54] F: that's what's made twitter so spam resistant
[15:55] F: if anything, twitter should probably make the e-mail notifications off by default and have a Report Spammer link or something, make it work like gmail's spam filter
[15:55] A: ah
[15:55] A: see, that would be good
[15:56] F: if enough people mark a person as a spammer, then the person gets removed from everyone's list
[15:56] F: that's why gmail is so spam free
[15:57] F: spam twitterers are much easier to identify than spam messages, so it'd be even easier to make it work that way.
Another place that is getting a lot of spam now is facebook. I get weird messages from models and etc. I hope its not going to turn into like myspace.com.
@Astarwithin. Good point. Thanks for the conversation.
@everyone else.. I never heard of CAPTCHA. Help me out...
Twitter's email notification system was down - and thus you got them all at once. Other points still totally valid though.
1) If you feel that you are being spammed by someone, the best thing that you can do is block that user. You should also submit a 'spam report' here:
http://twitter.com/help
(select 'spam report' from the drop-down)
Twitter is using both of these methods to monitor spam on Twitter and they ARE taking action (terminating the account).
2) There is an active discussion going on at Get Satisfaction about the use of CAPTCHA when following new users. If you have thoughts/ideas on this please add your comments there. Twitter uses Get Satisfaction as their primary platform for these kinds of issues.
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/requi...
3) If you have thoughts/ideas on how to report a spammer, please contribute to this discussion on Get Satisfaction:
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/how_w...
"Is it time for Twitter to move aggressively to prevent spammy accounts?"
I don't, however, think that captcha is the way to go, since people can still follow from their phones simply by sending 'follow username' via sms. They can also follow people through any of third-party apps that use the API by sending the same command. It will be tricky to implement the traditional web captcha through those channels.
Also, if it turns out that some form of captcha will be used, I think it should only be required if UserA follows UserB AND UserB does not yet follow UserA. Someone who chooses to reciprocate with a follow-back shouldn't have to jump through the same hoops.
That and CAPTCHA - I agree with everyone else, frsutrating the ability to use bots to mass follow would likely help a great deal.
The spam accounts and associated content will, however (a) clutter up the public stream, and (b) create some annoying extra traffic for twitter servers. But do that many folks really try to keep tabs on the public timeline?