Stop Twitter Spam

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about Twitter’s new following limits. The main issue has been that businesses and people who follow a lot of people can’t add new followers, even though they are not spamming people and their Following:Followers ratio is reasonable - e.g. 2:1, 1.5:1, etc.

I’ve been pretty vocal about this, pinging @ev and @biz about it (I didn’t get a response) and adding this comment on Get Satisfaction:

Twitter - you guys have said many times that you will be continually reviewing your approach to fighting spam and refining yout tactics over time. I’ve been tracking the new follower limits very closely and I can’t imagine that you guys were targeting @pandora_radio, @comcastcares, and dozens of other legitimate businesses and individuals with these limits. And telling them to just wait a few days to add new followers is asking for a tremendous amount of patience from some of your most loyal users. Please tell us that you guys are looking closely at whatever algorithm is behind the follower limits to insure that only the *real* bad guys (like the6figureteam.com spammers) are being flagged, not the good guys.

And I wasn’t the only one complaining about this. Brad Williams (@williamsba on Twitter) wrote a blog post called “Twitter Follow Limits are Jacked” and many others have been discussing it on Twitter and GetSatisfaction.

There is a new development today. Cathryn Hrudicka (a.k.a. @CreativeSage), who is one of the people who has been impacted by this, posted this comment on FriendFeed today:

So after my angst outburst last p.m., I got this cryptic email from Twitter today: “Thanks for requesting to be on Twitter’s API whitelist. We’ve approved your request! You should find any rate limits no longer apply to authenticated requests made by CreativeSage. This change should take effect within the next 24 hours. Thanks much, and good luck with your application!” So now we have to “apply” to NOT have quotas? I guess my repeated tweets & msgs. count as an “application.”

This is the first that I’ve heard about an API whitelist. I will update this post with further details as they become available. In the meantime, if you feel like you’ve been unfairly throttled by Twitter you should submit a support request to them pleading your case.

I still think that Twitter needs to fine tune their algorithm to eliminate the false positives but implementing a whitelist is a step in the right direction.

Update:

Based on this post on the Twitter Developer Group, API whitelisting has been around since at least May of this year. There is a special request form for it here. But this seems to be geared more towards applications that access the Twitter API and need to bypass the 100 requests/hour limit. For example, here is a tweet from the developer of Twitturly, which is a service that tracks the most popular links on Twitter. Maybe this same API whitelist controls the follower limits that are affecting people like @CreativeSage and @williamsba?

Update #2:

The first commenter on this blog post mentions this tweet from @williamsba:

“Your request for Twitter API whitelisting has been rejected, The whitelist is only for use by developers”…but….that’s what I am!

So based on this, there must have been some kind of mix-up with the email that was sent to @CreativeSage. The whitelist only applies to developers who are developing applications that access the Twitter API. If you’ve been hit with a follower limit - i.e. you are unable to follow people - it appears that you’re only recourse is removing followers. The people who are impacted by the continue to be upset and I don’t blame them - for example: this recent comment on Get Satisfaction.

Over the weekend, Biz Stone from Twitter said that he would explain the limits in more detail on the Twitter blog. As of today (July 31st) he hasn’t posted anything.

Update #3:

Progress. Twitter co-founder Ev Williams sent out this tweet earlier today (July 31), in response to @jesatieu:

Update #4 (8/7/08):

The saga continues. As far as I can tell, Twitter has not relaxed the rigid follow limits yet. Earlier today, Ev Williams posted on the Twitter blog about their anti-spam measures and left the door open for changes…

Recently, we’ve seen significant impact by introducing limits around how many accounts can be followed on Twitter under certain conditions. These limits are designed to not affect the vast majority of users. However, some people (who are not spammers) have (and will) run into them … let me note that these limits are still a work in progress. We’ve had some bugs in them that are still being worked out. And we need to tweak them to adapt to what we learn about our ever-changing system.

In the meantime, the people who have been impacted by these follow limits continue to be frustrated. Some are even giving up on Twitter and moving over to competing services such as Plurk.

Earlier today, TechCruch broke a story about Twitter user @johng77536 (account has been deleted). As of the writing of this blog post, this user is following 0 but has over 7,000 followers. And there is another account (account has now been deleted) linking to the same site (hotmoda.com) with over 9,000 followers.

TechCrunch speculates that this spammer is exploiting some vulnerability in the API. I’ll be following this closely and will post updates here if and when there are more details about how this happened.

Here is the link to block this user. Click here to block the account that is following over 9,000. These accounts have been deleted by Twitter.

Below is a very odd looking graph from TwitterCounter.com showing @johng77536 going from zero to over 7,000 followers in just one day.

Related:

• Get Satisfaction: Some nasty techniques used by Twitter spammers
• ComputerWorld: Teen uses worm to boost ratings on MySpace.com (October 2005)

More Coverage:

• Sean Percival: How Johng77536 Gamed Twitter

Update:

• As of about 7:00 pm PST on July 27 these accounts have been removed by Twitter

ReadWriteWeb suspects that there is a connection between the controversial new follow limits and yesterday’s major issue with follower / following counts going down. Twitter hasn’t acknowledged any connection (yet).

While we appreciate the fact that the Twitter team is fighting the spam problem … you would think that they would have considered this potential ramification to implementing their new pattern-detecting technology. It’s almost as if Twitter themselves do not even know what would constitute someone being a spammer. If that’s the case, they should ask the community for guidance before rolling out a brand new anti-spam bot.

- Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb

There is more coverage about this developing story on TechMeme. I’m trying to remain optimistic but if they don’t get this problem resolved quickly it’s going to turn into a real nightmare for Twitter, just a few days after they were featured on the front page of USA Today.

Update #1:

According to WebProNews, Biz Stone from Twitter has denied any connection between the anti-spam efforts and the problem with the Following/Follower counts:

Stone responded to request for comment saying the data loss was not because of recent spam efforts, but instead is a bug. “The followers/followees bug is unrelated to our spam initiatives,” he said. “We worked on it last night but we’ll be looking more into the follower bug today.”

Update #2:

Biz Stone once again denies that the Following/Followers issue has anything to do with the anti-spam bot. This is from a post by Cnet.

We just received an update on the situation from Biz Stone, over at Twitter. He writes, “Some users lost followers as a result of an error during a database upgrade. We replaced followers last night and will be replacing followers today. This is not related to the spam initiative we blogged about the other day.” At least Twitter is hard at work trying to remedy the situation.

Update #3:

Twitter updated their blog: Where Are My Followers

Once again, they denied any connection to the anti-spam initiatives…

Please note that this is unrelated to our ongoing spam initiative as some folks were wondering. Twitter fights spam by putting rules in place to inhibit certain activities. We don’t automatically delete accounts en masse.

Update #4:

4:15 PST - People are starting to report that their Followers / Following numbers have been restored.

ZDnet reported earlier today that a number of Twitter power users aren’t able to add new followers because of the new limits that Twitter has been put in place to discourage spammers. Pandora Community Manager Lucia Willow is one of the people who was caught up in this. She recently stated her case on the Get Satisfaction site. If you think Twitter needs to modify their algorithm for flagging spammers you should leave a comment on this topic on Get Satisfaction. I’m all for Twitter taking action against spammers before they become a problem, but the target should be the obvious spammers, not the respected power users.

Lucia is, without a doubt, not exhibiting “spammy” behavior on Twitter. In fact, I posted about her several months ago as an example of a business that is using Twitter effectively to communicate with their customers.

Here is the full text of Lucia’s post on Get Satisfaction:

Hi Crystal and Ev -

Thanks for posting on GSFN about this. I’m glad you’re putting limits in place to discourage spammers.

However, there are many of us who are using Twitter in a legitimate and respectful manner who are being blocked from following.
I didn’t receive any notification that I had reached any following limit. I got the “Something has gone wrong” message repeatedly until I surmised what was happening.

I’ll email Support to discuss this, but I wanted to point this out here since a discussion was already in place.

We have such a fun Pandora community going on via Twitter, I’d hate for it to be hampered. In terms of proving I’m not spammy, I’m happy to provide previously-twittered testimonials regarding how “useful” and/or “fun” my 2,000 twitter followers have found my twitterstream.

I’m very careful, as a Community Manager, about how I use Twitter. I hand-pick who to follow. My followed-following rate has always been close to 1-to-1. I only tweet a few times a day. I’ve repeatedly posted my personal email address in the stream, for conversations that require more than 140 characters.

Thanks very much for your attention, and for all your hard work!
I hope this gets sorted out soon. I’ve been enjoying the community of Pandora-lovers who have been bonding via your service.

Sincerely,
Lucia Willow
Pandora Community Manager

@pandora_radio on Twitter

Image courtesy of Christopher Penn, who is also facing this problem.

More Coverage:

• ZDNet: Twitter anti-spam efforts go overboard
• Christopher Penn: Twitter has Pulver-ized me. Time to move to Plurk?
• TwitterStars: New Twitter Policy Towards Aggressive Following
• Twittermaven: Do we hate spam that much?

GetSatisfaction Discussion:

• I’m not a spammer, I’ve got a 1-to-1 ratio, Let me Follow People Back Please!!!
• What happens if I hit a Twitter limit?

People are also leaving comments on the Twitter blog…

While I fully understand and approve of the desire to get rid of spammers (spitters?) we need to be very very sure these limitations do not adversely affect the experience for “real” regular users of Twitter. Unfortunately, they ARE affecting those users…. more (Vicky Brown)

By limiting the number of followers, now rumored to be set at 2500, you’re punishing people who have an almost equal followers/follow ratio… Essentially these are the people who have made Twitter as popular as it is to day. Sounds to me like you’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater… more (Sharon McPherson)