A spam-less Twitter feed might just be too good to be true. Spam is becoming an increasing problem on Twitter and something has to be done to separate the wheat from the chaff. Spammers are using Twitter as a tool by replying to your @username, which then causes the Tweets to show up in your timeline. There isn’t really a way to filter Twitter spam directly from a Twitter client. But there may be soon.
Loic Le Meur has proposed to add a “report as spam” button to the Twitter desktop clients his company has created, Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop. This button would flag the spammer to Twitter (or to a separate database of users) and Seesmic or Twhirl could then exclude the spammer from its client apps after a sufficient number of users report them as spam. Le Meur also says that the clients would manually check the potential spammers to ensure that they are actually spammers.
After the clients are established as spammers, Twitter could then delete or block the user accounts. Le Meur says that his Twitter clients will soon include a “report as spam” button and is calling on fellow popular Twitter clients, Tweetdeck and Tweetie, to follow suit. The one potential issue with the flag button, says Le Meur, is that Twitter prefers spam to be reported by a direct message to its spam account “@spam.” But you need have @spam to follow you first (it seems to be autofollowing) before hitting the flag button on a Twitter client. It’s an extra step the user would have to take to make the button usable, says Le Meur.
Flagging is a good idea and a great first step to battling spam but what Twitter really needs is an Akismet-like plug-in. Akismet, created by Wordpress developers, filters link spam from blog comments and trackback pings for blogs. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to a blog site, it is submitted to Akismet, which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether it is spam. Akismet says that its plug-in has caught 10.7 billion spam comments from blogs since its launch in 2005.
There are a few Twitter applications that let you flag possible spam, but none are tied to the Twitter desktop clients, like Seesmic Desktop or Tweetie. Topify, a nifty service we reviewed recently, gives you a more comprehensive version of the standard New Follower email offered by Twitter, by providing the user’s Bio, Follower/Following numbers, the user’s most recent tweets and the ability to block and unfollow potential spammers directly from the New Follower email. Twerp Scan scans through your followers and flags Twitter users who could be potential spammers. You can control the filtering options that determine who is a spammer (i.e. number of followers vs. following). But Twitter may have to develop or license its own spam blocking software if the problem becomes more prevalent.
>Information provided by CrunchBase
At least there is one twitter post in TechCrunch. But I don’t see it uncommon, people talk about Twitter all the time. I kinda like Twitter applications more than twitter by itself. Purely because the applications bring value out of Twitter. A couple of favorite apps are coupontweet.com that shows coupons tweeted in twitter. But the best is http://www.boilingpage.com that shows the hottest pages on the web based on how popular they are in Twitter. That’s quite powerful.
why don’t we charge $.01 per twitter ?
bahahaha
I would be broke in a week.
Exactly. People would think twice before tweeting about the color of their poop.
I would never think of it again.
Reporting spammers is a good step and one that should be taken. But referrer spamming is an arms race so this certainly won’t be a sufficient step. Another problem area is the relative ease of creating new Twitter accounts. Currently, it is very easy for a spammer to create new accounts as fast–faster, probably–than any reporting mechanism would detect and block them.
if you want to stop spam :
1. stop click follow without checking the profile.
2. if someone with zero updates, do not follow .
3. if someone just update links , do not follow.
4. a girl who you will never talk to you in real will not follow you on twitter.
5. everyone with auto direct message . close his account.
by follow these say good bye to %75 of spam on twitter …
We shouldn’t have to do this. If all they’re doing is following lots of people and posting URLs, then they should be blocked automatically, or placed in a spam queue.
Twitter is really failing here. They need to be much more aggressive, even if that means a few false positives
Good post keep posting
kinda ironic that this is basically spam on a post about twitter spam… hi comment spam we never missed you
You should also check out @OurielOhayon’s service, topify.com as a alternative to twimailer.
There is another solution. I’m working on something called twittfilter.com that creates a score for each friend and follower you have. Using this scoring system, you can filter out messages on demand. I do not think it would be all that hard to extend that scoring-filtering system to incoming messages as well. Based on the scoring system now in place, I can spot a spammer with pretty high reliability. Its not perfect, and its still in Alpha, but this could be yet one more tool to fight spam.
“…you need have @spam to follow you first (it seems to be autofollowing)”
Hm, “seems to be”??
Yes, if you follow @Spam (official Twitter), they will auto-follow you. It is tactical that you dm spam complaints, rather than @ them.
You will only receive occasional tips on combating spam, best practices, and updates.
By its open nature, twitter isn’t going to work
with gmail-like spam filters.
They are being proactive, but the best
form to keep it open is community involvement.
If everyone chipped in, it would make it better for all, and less tempting for spammers.
PS- Be nice to @Spam. I learned there is extremely solid peep back there
You mean to say, that Twitter should stop regulating spam and let it lose, just like that?
You can also simply “block” them when they show up. Of course that only works if you’re getting just a few. reporting solves a bigger issue.
It does not require an extra step with smart user interface design. Mr. Le Meur should make the proposed “report spam” button on his client follow @spam if you click it and then unfollow after it successfully dm’s the account. However, if you were already following @spam it would leave your following status unchanged after report spam.
You mean a service that allows limitless anonymous accounts has a spam problem? NO WAY!
Am I the only one who has never received spam on Twitter? I just have not seen the problem others have.
What kind of spam you received? Can you please explain?
@Aaron: its not quite that easy… in order to DM, the recipient must be following the sender. So, the client would need to attemp to DM and if it failed, follow @spam and queue up the DM to resend later, after @spam followed back.
Spam on twitter is going to be one of the largest hurdles for the developers to cope with if they are going to survive.
Mass tweeting and retweeting is already becoming a serious problem.
Danel
https://spideroak.com – Online Backup and Sync
Blogged my thoughts on this earlier, so rather than comment here…
http://builtbyd...and-a-solution/
why not do what I do and just block bots and spammers?
I suppose there will come a time when you will run out of time to do this manually – there will be so many.
The solution has to come from Twitter itself, IMO.
So rival spam bots will try to report each other first and more completely. This will escalate. There are much simpler steps Twitter should take. I keep getting followed by accounts with thousands of followers and zero updates. Why should any account be able to follow others if they never write a single tweet?
The key to spam bots is the “gain thousands of followers and MAKE BIG BUCKS” mentality. Try looking up the Twitter Traffic Machine. That is what is creating the nonsense.
It would be trivial for Twitter to detect accounts that followed this approach and block them.
I think anyone who zero or less than x (let Twitter determine x) should anyway be deleted.
I think Twitter usernames are being parked just like domains.
I truly agree with you. A person requests to follow you and if go look in his profile, there is hardly any tweet from the account. Maybe Twitter should have member gradations – like they use in forums like DP and grade only particular members to send direct messages or tweet to veteran twitter users. But that again would be laying too many restrictions on the site and blocking the fluidity of Twitter.
these people just don’t give up, do they? always there trying to make it harder to just relax. they’re ultimately ruining our good time. lame.
This is only the beginning. The more popular Twitter became the more spam will follow.
I agree. There will be more spam on twitter.
fuck twitter.Its for fags and trendy douchebags.
Spammers have been around forever, and Twitter has a ton of it. I don’t see how this article is newsworthy.
I am agree that on twitter is more spammer that other.I suppose there will come a time when you will run out of time to do this manually there will be so many.
This is an inevitable side effect of going mainstream. Crowdsourced spam reporting certainly matches Twitter’s nature, but likely won’t be enough. To stay ahead of the curve, Twitter would have to invest into a better spam filters. This isn’t a big problem now, but just in a few months it will be. Millions of new accounts and openness of the platform make Twitter an attractive target for sharks out there.
Just wrote about this at Connections (Twitter Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Twones)
http://connecti...-of-the-twones/
A result of one-day most tweeted links:
http://michalfr...ou-might-expect
Another way to fight Twitter spam is via a new service that I’ve been building called Philtro (www.philtro.com).
Philtro’s semantic filtering engine learns when you rate particular tweets with a thumbs up/down action — then it filters the rest of your Twitter stream based on that information.
It’s currently running in a private beta — feel free to @ me for early access.
I find this a disgrace. Purges, ala inquisition.
How is spam defined anyway?
Can’t people promote themselves in what they do on twitter? Stuff like the blog posts they write to the services they offer?
When did marketing become synonymous with spam?
I may be strawmaning here, but I bet there are hundreds of thousands of people that don’t really get what is the difference between legitimate marketing efforts and SPAM. ME included.
Are there clear criteria? You can promote stuff that you do for free, but if you profit from it, you can’t? is that the criteria? I just do not get it.
I mean, people only follow you if they want to. They are not forced to do so, and if they don’t want to know about what you are offering in terms of value, be it commercial or free, they can just unfollow you, and even block you, so what the hell does twitter SPAM even mean? You can’t send DM’s to people who hasn’t followed you, so you can’t SPAM, as I thought SPAM was supposed to be (a direct, private, unsolicited contact with a call to action for a commercial transaction).
Can someone explain to me what Twitter SPAM is, what companies can do and what they can’t, or point me to some authoritative resource on the subject?
Thanks.
Perhaps I should have read your post before I posted mine. I agree with you completely.
Like any social networking site. Once mass popularity is achieved the spammers will come, which is clearly happening at Twitter now. Something must obviously be done to report and eliminate this behavior in order for Twitter to keep it’s loyal users.
what is Twitter SPAM? {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/YQerDQwqxn_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”what is Twitter SPAM? ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/kcUOPuOBDF”}}}
What is the point of twitter if it isn’t to allow ppl to frequently answer the question: What are you doing? – Chatty ppl get to chat, Geeky ppl get to show off their new site/code/app whatev, Grumpy ppl get to complain, and Broke ppl get to try to make $? Twitter only allows 500 direct msgs in a single day. Perhaps there should be a limit on Tweets per profile/ or IP (yeah right)/ or they should just leave it be and enjoy the success.
Thankfully I’ve had very few spammers. Then again, I’m pretty selective of who I follow. So long as you have content and know basic spelling/grammar skills (so I don’t die every time I get your updates), that’s fine.
The @reply stuff is pretty obnoxious though, I must admit.
There is an even easier way to fight spam…Unfollow
Adding a database of spammy users to a Twitter client is not Loic le Meur’s idea.
It was first proposed by Tamura Jones in her popular “TweepMe Effect” article.
Mar 21 2009: Tamura Jones
http://www.tamu...pMeEffect.xhtml
Le Meur repeated her idea without acknowledgment:
Apr 26 2009: Loc le Meur
http://loicleme...a-solution.html
No offence but I think people are retarded if they can’t unfollow spammers :p Some people think that some of the spamm is useful to them.
You talk almost like you are forced to follow people. Or are you random following people and think that you will get good content also? ;P
CAPTCHA! hahaha
There is no way that a manual solution will work out. It has to be automated or at least semi-automatic to be successful.
So far I’m blocking everyone that looks like spam but I’m pretty sure that in the future this will become a serious issue.
It might be an idea to establish something like a reputation system and let users choose a threshold. Everyone below that threshold won’t be able to contact you in any way. So you need to build up your reputation via friends that know you first until you are able to spread your word. If one of the people that you granted points is starting to spam you’ll lose points as well. This should keep the spammers from pushing each other – because they would damage all the linked accounts once they start.
This certainly needs some fine tuning but I guess it’s worth a shot.
Twitter is hiring a Spam Czar: http://bit.ly/Vxhmb and here is my contribution to solving some of the problems http://gsfn.us/t/khp
What about spam followers who are hackers, and they just keep adding more and more followers to your account. (All from same hacker?) Blocking does nothing!! What about these jerks?
What about creating #spamsunday
On this day, people recommend ’spam accounts’. Then, your legitimate followers can block them before they even follow them. Thus, no spam account could follow anyone if enough people blocked them.
Basically an immunization.
@rangt
Twitter should charge $1 to create an account. Spammers create thousands of accounts to push twitter spam / follows. It would put an abrupt stop to it.
There’s no good solution here. Just look at the mess that Craigslist has become. Any tools that are developed to flag spammers or identify nonspammers could be easily by manipulated by spammers themselves. The only true solution is to either charge for access or link user accounts back to digital certificates. Long term, spam is by far the biggest threat to Twitter — especially considering how easy it is to setup new accounts and access the system via an API.
We are all fed up with Twitter spammers and fraudulent users. I could be doing better things while on Twitter instead of blocking spammers.
So many people are using programs that create hundreds and hundreds of accounts every day. Twitter needs to hurry up and implement something.
Until that time we will have to rely on sites like http://showmeyourfork.com/ and http://twerpscan.com/en
Just do a follow on @NASA right now. With all the #moonbombing discussions going on… every seconds post it seems is from someone whom won $200 free groceries, or 42″ plasma tvs with links. Yeah, first time I’ve ever seen this sorta thing… twitter (or Tweetdeck) needs to do something about it, or allow you to perhaps filter based on keywords.
3 steps to Get Rid of Twitter Spam http://bit.ly/1DXJ6g