Stop Twitter Spam

More and more I’m noticing that when I get a New Follower email and click on the profile link, the profile page doesn’t exist. For example, two days ago I received a New Follower alert for Twitter user lalinthida but when I went to check their profile page today, it returned ‘That page doesn’t exist!’.

This is not a Fail Whale situation. This means that this user has been reported as a spammer and has been terminated from Twitter in less than two days. This two-day timeframe is a huge improvement from a couple of months ago when it would take a couple of weeks for a spammer to get ejected.

I think a couple of factors are at work here. First, there are more and more people reporting spammers to Twitter and blocking spammers. In fact, many people are tweeting about who they are blocking.

This public reporting of spammers causes the word to get around pretty quickly, resulting in even more people blocking / reporting the spammers. Thanks to a recent blog post on /Message, you can also search for these types of spam alert tweets using the #twitspam hashtag (people are also using #Twitterspam). And recently, the TwitSpam blog has also become a great resource for listing spammers. Many people are going to that blog and proactively blocking spammers who are listed there.

The second factor is Twitter acting quickly on the termination of these spam accounts. I don’t know if they’ve recently added more support staff or if they’ve just gotten more efficient but whatever they are doing is working.

I think this is a great development. The Twitter community is protecting their turf and sending a loud and clear message to spammers that they are not welcome here. If you’re a spammer you’re going to have to ask yourself: is it worth spending your time spamming Twitter if your account is only going to be around for a day or two?

Note:
I’ve noticed that many people are reporting spammers to @spam. According to the @spam profile page, this Twitter account is associated with Twitter Headquarters but I’ve heard no official reports from Twitter about this being a legitimate account. Until we get some official word from Twitter, I recommend that people report spammers to Twitter by going to this Help page and submitting a ’spam request’. If someone has confirmed that the @spam account is legitimate please contact me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

Update:
More proof that Twitter is moving faster on terminating spam accounts…