chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

remove AntiMalware GO virus — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:06:19 -0000

There are too many APIs:(

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Ryan @ Linkbuildr — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:46:54 -0000

I got 12 today and it's driving me nuts...Twitter needs to put a handle on that API!

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Shea Robbins — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:16:10 -0000

Thanks for all the "How to Tips!" I am so tired of my Twitter account being spammed. @shearobbins

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

adamjweeden — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:14:26 -0000

Just Change Your password/block the app. simples.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Damian Davila — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:01:29 -0000

Hi Chris, use these 4 simple steps to get rid of Twitter spam via DMs

http://idaconcpts.com/2009/11/04/twitter/

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

replica bags — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:46:29 -0000

Twitter should add "Report Spam" button right next to "Reply" and "View Tweet" in the search results

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

tonilamb — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:02:15 -0000

Chris
Before I read this post I had already started implenting theis unfollow process on my twitter account. It has never made any sense to follow everybody back & realisticly have a genuine connection with thousnads of friend/follow ratio. To me it's way more powerful and effective to have a smaller group of very valuable friends vs thousands of very superficial follows just following you for the flippin hell of it! In my book, you just earned a ton of respect points for having the courage to stand up for whats right. Thank You!

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

bmtrnavsky — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:38:26 -0000

I follow everyone back, but aggressively un-follow annoying people who only publish their blog feed or send me annoying DM's. If I am getting driven nuts with only 3500 followers you must be driven INSANE! Sorry Chris!

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Zia_NC — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:54:49 -0000

I am with you.. I am female and I don't use third party and I also follow only those I know or do business with, however every few days the same 102 follows show up EVEN AFTER BEING BLOCKED.. they are from an obvious porn site and I have to go in ONE by ONE to delete them. Forget asking twitter for help with this.. I can't even group block them or do a group delete

whats worse is this group does not even show up on my twitter computer page (just the following count) and are on my Iphone only, when I go to find them on the site.. they do not turn up.. this is becoming annoyinbg a time consuming

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Ben Kunz — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:06:13 -0000

Sounds remarkably like Izea's Pay-Per-Tweet or Pay-Per-Post - unwanted, unauthentic messages junking up the In box or blog feed, pretending to be real comments or opinions.

It's all pollution, Chris. Glad you're beginning to see it.

If you claim you don't, please re-read your own post above in 2 years ;)

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Brandon Hull — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:05:16 -0000

I'm afraid any open system like Twitter will always be overrun by obnoxious marketers who go for volume of messages and percentage of responses, rather than quality, trustworthy interactions.

I've had very little to post at Twitter since creating an account, frankly, and yet I've had to block a multitude of followers. I can only imagine how you high-number-of-followers work to screen things out.

Ironic how these productivity and communication apps become large-scale distractions in short time...

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

BusinessBlogs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:10:53 -0000

I agree. I do not auto-follow. Instead I only follow people who @ me with interesting discussion. I also ban anyone who sends me this type of spam.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Thomas Cooke — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:48:15 -0000

Expecting Twitter to somehow restrict people/companies from Spamming is kind of like expecting the postal service to not deliver junk mail. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I've always respected the policy of you follow me/I'll follow you. But you can pretty much get a feel for how someone is using Twitter to communicate by looking at their first page of posts and then make a decision if they are inline with what you are all about. Harder to do if you are Chris Brogan because of the volume, but I believe it's necessary for the community to establish the rules of who to follow/not follow and weed out the Spammers by defining value filters. No value in the most recent 20 posts, no follow. Maybe it's not that easy.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

GilPizano — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:25:54 -0000

Amen to stopping these! It appears this has just recently escalated in the past couple of weeks. Mafia Wars, Twitter Army recruiting, and the "I just gave @<twitte_raccount_name_here_please> a <enter random="" object="">, they should send me a gift ;)" direct message simply need to stop!

Thanks Chris for the post!

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

persimew — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:13:23 -0000

I don't spend much time on Facebook - I don't want virtual teddy bears and fights with Vampyres and Werewolves - I agree we don't need them on Twitter.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Louis vuitton handbags — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:09:13 -0000

this is why the wordpress plugin Akismet so popular, but as a blogger, you have to spent many times to write and have to spend time on distinguish spam.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Dalka — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:08:46 -0000

I totally agree with the post sentiment. I held an open ended discussion with some programmers at Barcamp Chicago two weeks ago in fact.

URL blocking is too simplistic and won't solve the problem. API's must be licensed and monitored for the community to judge how much or how little value is added to the community. People who abuse the API should be banned. People who do things that add value should be rewarded! API access should not be free to everyone, it is after all a privledge to utilize private property, it's time the private property owners treated it as such.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Yann Gourvennec — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:12:27 -0000

to an extent, Twitter is already very addictive and generates a lot of messages. Questions raised around productivity and attention span are definitely valid. That kind of spam behaviour and other spy master and what nots is even worse and makes you wonder whether the tool will be able to survive the hype. Can't agree more, abuse should be blocked.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

hollisthomases — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:23:11 -0000

Chris,

I think Tee's point is very well taken. Twitter is so new and people are so unfamiliar with it and all the apps built around it, that they hardly know what to look out for. And frankly, Twitter's made it easy to build apps that new ones are cropping up every day.

Unfortunately, the culture of social media has numbed people to question what it is that they're submitting their log-ins/information to and the security of all that information. Twitter has an SSL log-in. How many people know this and use it. I just, at this very moment, discovered that Facebook has this option too...but who thinks to use it? We're all on wireless devices now with packets of info flying everywhere. Why aren't people more concerned about the security of their information? If we were, we might be a little more cautious about using 3rd party applications to begin with.

I also like Tee's suggestion about using the community vigilance to do good. Maybe a board or collective resource could be put together to identify current spam scams to look out for or something like that. Might take a few minutes more than hitting the block button or reporting them to Twitter as spam, but could it help the greater good?

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Jusywho — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:50:08 -0000

What you might consider spam may not be spam to the person who sent it to you. If the spam came directly from the 3rd party site, then they should definitely be made to walk the gang plank. If you get it from someone you follow, then you hope the person knows you and acts accordingly.

This is why I don't follow everyone who follows me. I "follow" those people via my Google Reader. If it's a private account, then I think how useful is their information to me before hitting the follow button.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

me — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:34:06 -0000

What makes those tweets so stupid? Some people like trivia and games, its not spam, these people are trying to engage you in conversation. If you dont like their tweets then dont follow them, but asking you what city you would like to live in is not spam. Chill out bro! Give 'em a break, just hit delete.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Sebastian Johnsson — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:45:35 -0000

This is pretty similar to what I stumbled upon a few days ago: http://www.sebastianjohnsso...

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

joshuaguffey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:23:23 -0000

I can't agree more. And that's only one type of spam. It's getting crazy how much unwanated spam we are exposed too. I recorded a 2 minute tweetcast about this very thing recently. How far will it go? Listen at http://bit.ly/16Rw8m

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

D Cootey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:46:52 -0000

@ACruiseGuy Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! You may not like those tweets, but we can't have Twitter censoring for content when it prunes spam. What if someone labels YOUR tweets nonsense? Then you'd be out of luck.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

D Cootey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:43:09 -0000

Perhaps it is time for Twitter to have a white list of approved vendors who access the API? I realize this will create an obstacle for new startups to access Twitter, but it'd go a very long way of keeping out spammers. Either that or allow a web apps a one-time access so that 3rd parties can't start automatically posting spam into our streams.