Stop Twitter Spam

Twitter Spam was recently a discussion topic on Steve Gillmor’s NewsGang Live podcast. This is from the 12:41 mark on the 03/31/08 edition (mp3):

[ NewsGang Live Guest ] (I’m not sure who said this)
Is there some kind of Twitter harvester that’s going on? I’m been getting followed by just tons of people that look like they’re following tons of people but don’t have any followers.

[ Steve Gillmor ]
Well what does that mean - that they don’t have any followers? Is that a criteria for anything?

[ NewsGang Live Guest ]
Well not necessarily. It just looks like they’re indiscriminately harvesting huge numbers of people from - say - Scoble, or…

[ laughter ]

The discussion continues on with a mention of Twitter Karma. Karoli suspected that Twitter Karma might be the culprit for the spam but I really don’t think that is the case. Twitter Karma makes it easier to follow people who are already following you and it allows you to do that in a very convenient way. It is not a way to add random people. There are tools that do not but I will not give them them the benefit of a link.