Stop Twitter Spam

Mashable recently took a look at the RU4Real experiment. This is a fake Twitter account built for the sole purpose of finding out how many people would follow it back, even though the profile included specific instructions to not follow back. Turns out that quite a few people still followed the account, either due to running an auto-follow script or following the account without bothering to look at the profile.

This makes me think of a discussion earlier today on Twitter about whether or not you should care about who is following you. Robert Scoble took the position that it doesn’t matter at all and you should only care about who YOU are following.

Scobleizer:
noise is good. If you don’t want noise, just use TweetScan to search. Followers don’t matter. It’s who YOU follow that matters.

Scoble would not take no for an answer on this point. There are many other people on Twitter, myself included, who want more control over who is following them. If we see that an obvious spammer has started following, we will block them. If the new follower seems interesting, we’ll follow back. If the person doesn’t seem interesting we won’t follow back but we won’t block.

So why is there so much difference of opinion on this topic of Twitter Followers? Are followers just an anonymous audience (like people who subscribe to an RSS feed), or should we be spending a half-minute on each new Follower clicking through to their profile to make a decision on whether or not we should follow back?

I came up with an analogy that isn’t perfect but it helps me to put this into context. This is from a comment that I made earlier on this blog so apologies to the handful of people who already saw this.

The main question that you have to ask yourself is:

Do you treat Twitter like your house or like a stadium?

If you treat Twitter like a house, you’ll want to know who someone is before you let them in the front door. If a stranger knocks at the front door, you’re going to ask them a lot of questions before you would even consider letting them in. If it’s someone going door to door and asking you to sign a petition, trying to sell you something, etc. you might not even answer the door. This screening process is like the New Follower notification + profile check that many people do with every new follower.

On the other hand, if you have a very large audience like Scoble, Calacanis, or Leo Laporte, you’re going to treat Twitter like a stadium. The more the merrier and everyone is welcome. In this case, Scoble, or Jason, or Leo is the guy on stage and the followers are in the seats. Every now and then they’ll do a Q&A with the audience. If a heckler in row 15 gets too annoying they might kick them out of the stadium (block them on Twitter).

I think both models are acceptable. Like many people have said, no two people have the same experience on Twitter. The problem is, we don’t have the right controls in place to screen new followers in an efficient way. We need a Twitter version of a ‘Don’t Call List’ or, going back to the house analogy, a ‘No Solicitors’ sign that you can hang on your Twitter front door.

I stumbled across a great blog called Daily Spam Read. I Love the part where he shouts out the ALL CAP’s.

Overheard on Twitter…

tivac: Up to at least one new spam follower a day now, Twitter needs to get their s***t together.

doulweapons: @tivac that is pretty crappy. i get 2 or 3 spam followers a week, but i block them rather quickly.

tivac: @doulweapons Yeah I block them ASAP but it’s way more work than it should be to block a new spam follower.

There was a very interesting discussion about Twitter Spam between @AndrewBadera, @Scobleizer, and a few others this morning. This is what I could piece together.

AndrewBadera: holy awesome anti-Twitter spam site: http://www.stoptwitterspam….

(Thanks Andrew!)

Kabren: @andrewbadera…That’s actually really nice. I’ve noticed a lot of Twitter follower spam recently.

Scobleizer: @andrewbadera why does it matter to you who follows you? If you don’t like it, just don’t add them. Don’t blame me, blame yourself.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer the ethos of what you’re encouraging is essentially spammy. it simply adds to the noise level.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer a majority of these mass adders aren’t doing it to enhance the quality of the experience, they’re doing it in an effort to increase their own personal volume potential. FAIL.

Scobleizer: @andrewbadera noise is good. If you don’t want noise, just use TweetScan to search. Followers don’t matter. It’s who YOU follow that matters.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer it’s the ethics and the intent as much as anything else. why encourage people to degrade something?

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer SIGNAL is good. noise is bad. If only you had a formula for instant increase of SIGNAL.

Kabren: @Scobleizer That makes sense…It’s just annoying, to me, at least, to see that people (companies) are misusing it.

Scobleizer: @Kabren if companies misuse Twitter block or unfollow them. Problem solved. WHO YOU FOLLOW DEFINES YOU.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer again, intent. purpose. ethos. way too many people blindly adding nothing to the equation.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer ok, it works for you. but let other people discover what works for them. don’t encourage behaviors that translate into spam.

Taytwit: @AndrewBadera someone did a script to autofollow everyone they could find - got a 17% add rate

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit and I’ve seen a few accounts that say “this is a fake account, I’m just testing to see how blindly people respond to follows”

Scobleizer: @andrewbadera I don’t see ANY spam in the 20,000 people I follow. I block spammers.

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit unfortunately human nature is such that the practice of mass adding is a lose-lose proposition

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit if people added only because they found someone interesting, great

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit but does someone following 3000+ people, with few followers of their own, really represent an interested and interesting party?

Kabren: @Scobleizer Yes. But wouldn’t it be nice to see those companies actually talking with their followers? Instead of just mass adding…

AndrewBadera: @Kabren craziness!

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer ahhh, but the perspective you’re missing here is “ours” vs. “yours” — how much additional, unwanted crap do we more “average” users have to put up with now, due to the behavior you’re encouraging?

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer not everyone’s a 24-7 always-on everything-geek. why encourage behavior that means others have to sort through more mess?

Scobleizer: @andrewbadera you simply haven’t thought about Twitter enough. If people spam you unfollow them. End of discussion.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer obviously, if I disagree with you, it must be because I haven’t thought about it enough. no room for another perspective.

bloggersblog: @Scobleizer You use autofollow though so don’t you end up unintentionally endorsing companies that might be doing it wrong on Twitter?

Scobleizer: @bloggersblog I block spammers when I see them.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer thank you for proving my point.

Taytwit: @AndrewBadera I find it intriguing that people follow regardless - even a self-identifying script experiment. Are they the problem?

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit no, but people blindly adding people to no greater purpose means 1000s of extra emails, 1000s of extra profiles to check

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit it becomes that much more difficult to connect with people MEANINGFULLY through the clutter

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit it becomes that much easier to overlook someone who really is worth reciprocating the follow

Scobleizer: @andrewbadera seems you want to win some sort of argument. I’ve already proven to everyone that unfollowing removes spam.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer you’re the one who initiated this conversation, not me. Who’s arguing? Who’s trying to “win” something here? Not me.

AndrewBadera: @Scobleizer I have an opinion. I’m defending it. You’re attack it. I’m fine with that, but you arbitrarily decide to cut off the convo.

Taytwit: What I don’t understand is the people locking their updates “because of spam” - I can’t see what they gain. Now only meaningless follows?

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit just like advertising email spam, both the spammer, and the suckers who buy in, are the problem.

Taytwit: @AndrewBadera I don’t know, I only add based on conversation. Would the issue would be fixed if follow notifications went away?

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit not really. you get a notice. you check a profile. that’s the MINIMUM in order to validate someone, to decide whether or not to reciprocate. which means, for all the interesting people worth following, I now get 100x as many notices for people who are spammers, who don’t get twitter but blindly follow Scoble’s advice, etc. etc. etc.

gcn1: @AndrewBadera There are people way smarter than me that could figure it out. But in the meantime, I’ll just block people.

AndrewBadera: @gcn1 the site I linked that started this convo actually maintains a list of suspected spammers too.

gcn1: @AndrewBadera but the prob with spammers is that they are chameleons. They have no shame and are clever enough to work/strain the system.

AndrewBadera: @gcn1 no doubt there. but how effective was, say, bluefrog, before that tier 1 douchebag got bribed, and bombed them off the grid?

Taytwit: @AndrewBadera it’s not, though. Don’t get notice. Follow people who excite you, regardless of who they follow. Wouldn’t that solve it?

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit yes and no. there’s only so much serendipitous discovery. every now and then, the pipe has to flow the other direction.

mdelfs: @AndrewBadera I think the issue (with “Twam,” Twitter Spam) would be solved if they would just tell me all about the person in the eMail!

mdelfs:@AndrewBadera I can’t say that I have found one yet on my side; they are all trying to push a site or sell a product or admit to using a bot

AndrewBadera: @mdelfs see that’s just it — a large majority are. which is why what Scoble encourages makes it harder to find the diamonds in the rough.

Taytwit: @AndrewBadera If following you means you owe them your time, then I can see your frustration. But I’m not sure that’s a sensible paradigm.

AndrewBadera: @Taytwit: I think it’s rude to not at least give someone a glance, if they’ve made the effort to follow you.

Well alrighty then! That was quite a discussion. My quick take on this? The core issue is the New Follower notification and the low signal to noise ratio on these. Robert Scoble - if you’re reading this - do you have your New Follower emails turned off? Just curious.

Updates:

1) A few hours after this conversation Scoble decided that 20,000 followers is enough. He has asked Twitter to turn off his auto-follow script.

2) There are some interesting comments about this discussion on Andrew Badera’s blog