[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Brant, As the developer of Twollo I take an exception to you saying Twollo is an abusive application and violates the TOS. We are do not exist to abuse the system, the number of user on our system is large and the vast majority of our users are good users who have a genuine interest in finding and following users who share their users. I think I have stated on this list before that I am not putting in features that spammers would normally use to cycle and abuse the system as a whole. I believe we have a good and open relationship with Twitter. I believe we have a good and open relationship with this group. Paul 2009/6/9 Brant btedes...@gmail.com This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
What if the Twitter community were to draft a code of honor that could be voted on by anyone with a Twitter account. Kind of like the Facebook ToS voting but actually community driven. A few questions regarding this: Do you think it would be possible for the community to come to a final decision? Would a CoH have any effect on users or application developers? How would the CoH be social enforced? Thoughts? Abraham On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 18:16, Caliban Darklock cdarkl...@gmail.com wrote: There's no technological solution to this. It has to be social. -- Abraham Williams | Community | http://web608.org Hacker | http://abrah.am | http://twitter.com/abraham Project | http://fireeagle.labs.poseurtech.com This email is: [ ] blogable [x] ask first [ ] private. Sent from Madison, WI, United States
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Without the potency of enforcement, what's the point? Quick, let's form the Twitter Shun Force. We'll have an angry mob of shunners and sneerings. -- Dossy Shiobara do...@panoptic.com -Original Message- From: Abraham Williams 4bra...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:52:33 To: twitter-development-talk@googlegroups.com Subject: [twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read What if the Twitter community were to draft a code of honor that could be voted on by anyone with a Twitter account. Kind of like the Facebook ToS voting but actually community driven. A few questions regarding this: Do you think it would be possible for the community to come to a final decision? Would a CoH have any effect on users or application developers? How would the CoH be social enforced? Thoughts? Abraham On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 18:16, Caliban Darklock cdarkl...@gmail.com wrote: There's no technological solution to this. It has to be social. -- Abraham Williams | Community | http://web608.org Hacker | http://abrah.am | http://twitter.com/abraham Project | http://fireeagle.labs.poseurtech.com This email is: [ ] blogable [x] ask first [ ] private. Sent from Madison, WI, United States
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Abraham Williams4bra...@gmail.com wrote: How would the CoH be social enforced? I think there's already social enforcement. You can d spam @whoever or just @spam @whoever to make your report. Developers of desktop clients might consider making a little macro function for this in their clients, which would make it even easier. There are three things EVERY Twitter user has to do for the spam problem to stop. First, stop following people just because they followed you. Second, before you follow someone, take a look at their updates first so you can be sure you want to follow that someone. And finally, if you don't like someone you're following, stop bitching about it and just unfollow! Think of followers as sex partners instead of friends. Whenever someone follows you, it's like they're saying I want to have sex with you. If you follow them back, it's like saying okay, let's have sex. If you have sex with everyone that asks, there are going to be problems, right? Stop doing that! And if you have sex with someone who turns out to be a freak or a weirdo, stop having sex with them!
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
You could do the Stackoverflow method of quietly silencing/ignoring the users that are spamming/abusing the system which is why I suggested not sending the XYZ is now following you email for people that look like they are abusing the system. Paul. 2009/6/11 Caliban Darklock cdarkl...@gmail.com On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Dossy Shiobarado...@panoptic.com wrote: Without the potency of enforcement, what's the point? Social enforcement is more potent than legal enforcement. If someone does something you don't like, and you unfollow them, they lose followers. That's what they wanted on Twitter in the first place, right? People following them? David Shapiro freakin' nailed it: Attention is the currency of the future. Followers are, in a very real sense, wealth. Even to the spammer, who doesn't quite value the followers in and of themselves, losing followers costs him money.
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On 6/11/09 2:48 PM, Paul Kinlan wrote: You could do the Stackoverflow method of quietly silencing/ignoring the users that are spamming/abusing the system which is why I suggested not sending the XYZ is now following you email for people that look like they are abusing the system. Absolutely. There should be a silent rate limit around following - normal human activity shouldn't really be 1 follow per second, and no more than 100 in a 5 minute period, reasonably. (We can argue about the fine-tuning of these numbers, but lets agree that we need both of these metrics.) Next, we stop making follow a realtime event, and instead hold them in a queue. Normally, they get released from the queue as normal after 30 seconds - unless either limit above gets violated. In the case either limit is violated, the _account_ gets flagged, and then any follow requests that are released from the queue from that point on no longer trigger a following notification to the followee if they're configured to receive them. In the case where legitimate use possibly crosses the path and gets flagged, simply clear the flag after 72 hours or some long-enough period for humans to identify actual spam accounts to get them suspended, but where a legitimate user will continue to use the account normally. -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On 6/11/09 3:52 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: I think you may not be considering legitimate automated systems that can quickly find a number of people who are discussing n emerging topic. My social network analysis does that - when it sees a topic becoming hot, it does some searches to see who is talking about it. If the topic reaches a threshold of significance, the system's Twitter user will immediately follow all the people it has found who have recently talked about it. In reality, those are often people who it is already following, but as Twitter grows, it tends to include more and more new people. The system periodically un-follows people who no longer seem to be talking about hot topics. Why must your system follow these individuals? If their timelines are public, you have no reason to follow them in order to pick up their updates. If their timelines are protected, how do you know to follow them in the first place, and this all assumes they'll grant you access to view their protected timeline, anyway. As a human user, I can understand following making use easier. As a software agent user, there's no reason to actually follow anyone - you should be using the stream/follow or stream/shadow APIs, today. -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Thank you for the response Doug. I intended the post to be more curious than implicative though it may have sounded more of the latter. In any case, we¹ve all grown to love the openness of the platform, and the platform itself as such a great opportunity to build. I just got nervous when I started thinking about the work we¹ve put in. Thanks for being communicative about this! On 6/9/09 9:10 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Obviously I can't address the impact since we don't have a document to deliver. Let me be clear, we are not thinking of taking functionality from the offering, but we are discussing how open we want to be moving forward. Most of the talks are around what we want to offer through the Streaming API and to whom should those privileges be extended. We are not concentrating our efforts on whom can we restrict and why? Remember we built this company on being open and to that we are committed, especially within the API team. We are very conscious that you developers are a little weary of our plans but rest assured we want to augment the ecosystem and its abilities rather than contract our offering. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Justyn Howard justyn.how...@gmail.com wrote: What are the chances that this new TOS will negate any of the hard work we¹ve done up until this point? Can you give us an idea of what will be protected? It¹s a little alarming to hear that Twitter might decide to reserve functionality that the developer network has built-on and enhanced in favor of internalizing as business assets. As there has been no TOS in place other than the general Twitter TOS, many of us have spent countless hours and $$ trying to build businesses around Twitter. Not trying to be an alarmist, just curious what this will ultimately mean for us? Justyn On 6/9/09 8:51 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com http://d...@twitter.com wrote: The API TOS is currently in development. It is taking longer than hoped as we are still exploring what we want to give to developers and what we want to protect as business assets. For now, make sure that you understand the general TOS we have in place. We do work with developers if they are willing to answer our attempts to reach out before shutting them off due to TOS violations. We also try to understand what developers are doing and how they may be heading against the grain before issuing whitelisting. Most developers are willing to work with us which is great and works out for everyone. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Jesse Stay jesses...@gmail.com http://jesses...@gmail.com wrote: Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit eas ier to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a busine ss on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com http://d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant, Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com http://a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com http://btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
If someone runs through your neighborhood killing people with a chainsaw, should the government shut down Home Depot because they sell chainsaws? It is a fact of life that, regardless of how benign or how powerful the tools are that you provide your users, 99% will use them in a sensible and responsible manner, and 1% will always try and abuse them. Twitter is on the right track to focus on dealing with that 1%. Dewald On Jun 9, 6:43 pm, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications:http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
I think 1% is pretty kind given the huge volume of spammers on Twitter these days. And I'd even say that spam-friendly tools turn non-spammers INTO spammers, either inadvertently, or gateway style -- once they see how they can take advantage of the system, they do. On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Dewald Pretoriusdpr...@gmail.com wrote: If someone runs through your neighborhood killing people with a chainsaw, should the government shut down Home Depot because they sell chainsaws? It is a fact of life that, regardless of how benign or how powerful the tools are that you provide your users, 99% will use them in a sensible and responsible manner, and 1% will always try and abuse them. Twitter is on the right track to focus on dealing with that 1%. Dewald On Jun 9, 6:43 pm, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications:http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On 6/10/09 9:55 AM, Dewald Pretorius wrote: It is a fact of life that, regardless of how benign or how powerful the tools are that you provide your users, 99% will use them in a sensible and responsible manner, and 1% will always try and abuse them. This is why I am ALWAYS very cautious about implementing a feature in Twitter Karma - I weigh heavily on the potential for abuse and have passed over implementing plenty of features because the severity of the potential abuse far outweighs the benefits to legitimate users. I agree that Twitter shouldn't go shutting down applications - ten more will sprout up from its corpse to take its place. Instead, simply keep an eye on the application and suspend/punish users who use it to abuse the system. Having a known ghetto is useful: it helps you focus where to patrol. Of course, the problem is that Twitter's only recourse is to suspend accounts - but, by then, the spammer's objective has already been met, following 800-1200 people, triggering probably 400-600 email notifications and subsequent click-throughs to a page full of link spam tweets. As long as they get a non-zero CTR and non-zero conversion rate, it was worth it. And, the proof of the spam is in the eating ... :-) -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Dossy, You are 100% correct. They will spam as long as there is some benefit for them doing so. Spamming is like shoplifting. It's part of the cost of doing business if you own a store. You put measures in place to try and prevent it, but you can never prevent it all. Dewald On Jun 10, 11:36 am, Dossy Shiobara do...@panoptic.com wrote: On 6/10/09 9:55 AM, Dewald Pretorius wrote: It is a fact of life that, regardless of how benign or how powerful the tools are that you provide your users, 99% will use them in a sensible and responsible manner, and 1% will always try and abuse them. This is why I am ALWAYS very cautious about implementing a feature in Twitter Karma - I weigh heavily on the potential for abuse and have passed over implementing plenty of features because the severity of the potential abuse far outweighs the benefits to legitimate users. I agree that Twitter shouldn't go shutting down applications - ten more will sprout up from its corpse to take its place. Instead, simply keep an eye on the application and suspend/punish users who use it to abuse the system. Having a known ghetto is useful: it helps you focus where to patrol. Of course, the problem is that Twitter's only recourse is to suspend accounts - but, by then, the spammer's objective has already been met, following 800-1200 people, triggering probably 400-600 email notifications and subsequent click-throughs to a page full of link spam tweets. As long as they get a non-zero CTR and non-zero conversion rate, it was worth it. And, the proof of the spam is in the eating ... :-) -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com |http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network |http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Having a known ghetto is useful: it helps you focus where to patrol. .sig dibs! -- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com -- FORTUNE: You will be hit with a lot of money. Avoid armoured trucks. ---
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Despite the poor, potentially offensive use of the term ghetto ? Any neighborhood of a particular clustered minor demographic deserves to be patrolled? Slick gents, slick. On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Cameron Kaiserspec...@floodgap.com wrote: Having a known ghetto is useful: it helps you focus where to patrol. .sig dibs! -- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com -- FORTUNE: You will be hit with a lot of money. Avoid armoured trucks. ---
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Andrew Baderaand...@badera.us wrote: You should look up the definition of ghetto sometime. According to Wikipedia, it's a portion of a city in which members of a minority group live; especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure - and a minority group is a sociological group that does not constitute a politically dominant voting majority of the total population. Criminals would qualify. Indeed, convicted felons can't vote, and by definition can never be part of the voting population at all. The odd thing about a place like Twitter is that the voting population - i.e. those who are considered the mainstream, using the application as it should be used; those who get it - has no actual power to generate or enforce policy. This is a reasonably new situation, because while we've certainly had such issues in political arena before, there has always been the opportunity for a certain critical mass of the population to SEIZE power through revolution and overthrow. Twitter, like other online communities around a specific service (e.g. Facebook, Google, iTunes), doesn't offer any such opportunity. A very real concern that should enter the heads of those who oppose improper use of Twitter is that there is a very real possibility that the Twitter team will need to monetize the application, and the single greatest opportunity to do that comes from those who are making money on Twitter. When you compare a random college student, who tweets his party invitations, to a spammer that makes $1,500 a day sending affiliate URLs to a few million followers across a dozen accounts... which one is more likely to pony up some cash? The incentives make things fuzzy. When you have a group with no power that dislikes the most likely avenue to earn revenue through the service, that group tends to be ignored - there is simply no reason to pay attention to them. They can't do anything more than leave.
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On 6/10/09 12:25 PM, Caliban Darklock wrote: A very real concern that should enter the heads of those who oppose improper use of Twitter is that there is a very real possibility that the Twitter team will need to monetize the application, and the single greatest opportunity to do that comes from those who are making money on Twitter. When you compare a random college student, who tweets his party invitations, to a spammer that makes $1,500 a day sending affiliate URLs to a few million followers across a dozen accounts... which one is more likely to pony up some cash? It still boggles my mind what kind of money marketers are offering to give me if I'd do X, Y or Z for them on Twitter. I'm not talking crazy money - I'll never get Oprah rich doing it - but it's certainly enough for 2-3 people to live on, very comfortably. BOGGLES MY MIND. The incentives make things fuzzy. When you have a group with no power that dislikes the most likely avenue to earn revenue through the service, that group tends to be ignored - there is simply no reason to pay attention to them. They can't do anything more than leave. OMG, you _so_ get it. I thinks I lurve you. *crush, crush* Twitter's business challenge is enabling the marketers to make money and give a portion of it back to Twitter, without letting them totally destroy the service in the process. It's obviously an incredibly thin line ... -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Dossy Shiobarado...@panoptic.com wrote: It's obviously an incredibly thin line ... It's the same line you walk as a marketer. On the one hand, you want to provide value to your followers, so they will keep following you. On the other, you want to extract value efficiently from those followers, because you're not in this for your health. Let's imagine you want to peddle crap on Twitter. All you need is a bit.ly account, TweetLater, TwitterFeed, and Google Alerts. You schedule a bunch of innocuous crap on TweetLater, so you look like a normal Twitter user. You pipe a Google Alert via RSS through TwitterFeed. You watch your bit.ly account. Within a week, you'll see a trend where clicks through to your Google Alerts spike - a lot - at a certain time of the day. So at that time of the day, immediately before your Google Alert posts, you post the link where you peddle your crap. Your followers are just like Pavlov's dogs. They are already /conditioned/ to expect your link at this time, and to click on it. And at that point, it passes off of Twitter, and the Twitter folks have no dominion. If you're any good at this (especially if you lack ethics and morality), it's all over but the payment processing. Now imagine that you force ALL these services to come down. You actually manage to kill all of them. Even Google Alerts. And you can have a pony, too. Then someone goes and writes this: #!/bin/sh /usr/bin/curl --basic --user my_twitter_username:my_twitter_password --data-ascii status=`echo $1 | tr ' ' '+'` http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json; Anyone with a reasonable amount of Linux experience can now instantly see that I've lost nothing. I can automatically schedule tweets by using cron. I can split RSS feeds with existing tools, then strip out the beginning and tack on a shortened URL - all I need is a short domain name with some 301 redirects on it. What, exactly, are you going to shut down NOW? Twitter itself? Or just the API? There's no technological solution to this. It has to be social.
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
In briefly checking out Mutuality and Twollo I'm not sure what about them is abusive. Mutuality says it lets you rapidly modify who you are following to match who is following you and Twollo auto follows accounts it thinks you might be interested in. Those are both useful tools and if used as intended are just that. I can see Twitter banning an individual user for using the services abusively but not the services themselves. On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 16:43, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi -- Abraham Williams | Community | http://web608.org Hacker | http://abrah.am | http://twitter.com/abraham Project | http://fireeagle.labs.poseurtech.com This email is: [ ] blogable [x] ask first [ ] private.
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Brant,Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
I think it depends on what measures the site is taking to promote responsible use of the applications. Both applications could be used for good, or bad. I can think of one fairly popular site that is all but endorses spammy behavior and charges users for access to these spammy tools. I don¹t want to point fingers, but my point is, there are probably more abusive apps out there than these two, and it all comes down to how responsibly the sites are guiding users, and if they have any rules in place to get rid of those who abuse it. On 6/9/09 6:28 PM, Abraham Williams 4bra...@gmail.com wrote: In briefly checking out Mutuality and Twollo I'm not sure what about them is abusive. Mutuality says it lets you rapidly modify who you are following to match who is following you and Twollo auto follows accounts it thinks you might be interested in. Those are both useful tools and if used as intended are just that. I can see Twitter banning an individual user for using the services abusively but not the services themselves. On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 16:43, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi http://twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Williams, my point is why would a user need to rapidly remove or add twitter followers? Mutuality even states that it is not responsible if your twitter account gets suspended for using their service. The underlying usage for these services is for abuse. I ordinarily wouldn't mind but the reason I care is that I think these types of services are using up resources that Twitter just can't afford to waste. On Jun 9, 7:28 pm, Abraham Williams 4bra...@gmail.com wrote: In briefly checking out Mutuality and Twollo I'm not sure what about them is abusive. Mutuality says it lets you rapidly modify who you are following to match who is following you and Twollo auto follows accounts it thinks you might be interested in. Those are both useful tools and if used as intended are just that. I can see Twitter banning an individual user for using the services abusively but not the services themselves. On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 16:43, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi -- Abraham Williams | Community |http://web608.org Hacker |http://abrah.am|http://twitter.com/abraham Project |http://fireeagle.labs.poseurtech.com This email is: [ ] blogable [x] ask first [ ] private.
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
I agree with you Justyn. There are probably tons of applications, but these two were on the top of my head. If a large amount of users are getting banned for using a particular service then Twitter should recognize a pattern and give the service notification of the issue and give them some time to address it. If user abuse continues then their access should be revoked for the good of the service. On Jun 9, 7:35 pm, Justyn Howard justyn.how...@gmail.com wrote: I think it depends on what measures the site is taking to promote responsible use of the applications. Both applications could be used for good, or bad. I can think of one fairly popular site that is all but endorses spammy behavior and charges users for access to these spammy tools. I don¹t want to point fingers, but my point is, there are probably more abusive apps out there than these two, and it all comes down to how responsibly the sites are guiding users, and if they have any rules in place to get rid of those who abuse it. On 6/9/09 6:28 PM, Abraham Williams 4bra...@gmail.com wrote: In briefly checking out Mutuality and Twollo I'm not sure what about them is abusive. Mutuality says it lets you rapidly modify who you are following to match who is following you and Twollo auto follows accounts it thinks you might be interested in. Those are both useful tools and if used as intended are just that. I can see Twitter banning an individual user for using the services abusively but not the services themselves. On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 16:43, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi http://twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit easier to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a business on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant,Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
The API TOS is currently in development. It is taking longer than hoped as we are still exploring what we want to give to developers and what we want to protect as business assets. For now, make sure that you understand the general TOS we have in place. We do work with developers if they are willing to answer our attempts to reach out before shutting them off due to TOS violations. We also try to understand what developers are doing and how they may be heading against the grain before issuing whitelisting. Most developers are willing to work with us which is great and works out for everyone. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Jesse Stay jesses...@gmail.com wrote: Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit easier to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a business on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant,Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Brantbtedes...@gmail.com wrote: Williams, my point is why would a user need to rapidly remove or add twitter followers? Turn that around: why should a user be FORBIDDEN to rapidly remove or add new followers?
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
What are the chances that this new TOS will negate any of the hard work we¹ve done up until this point? Can you give us an idea of what will be protected? It¹s a little alarming to hear that Twitter might decide to reserve functionality that the developer network has built-on and enhanced in favor of internalizing as business assets. As there has been no TOS in place other than the general Twitter TOS, many of us have spent countless hours and $$ trying to build businesses around Twitter. Not trying to be an alarmist, just curious what this will ultimately mean for us? Justyn On 6/9/09 8:51 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: The API TOS is currently in development. It is taking longer than hoped as we are still exploring what we want to give to developers and what we want to protect as business assets. For now, make sure that you understand the general TOS we have in place. We do work with developers if they are willing to answer our attempts to reach out before shutting them off due to TOS violations. We also try to understand what developers are doing and how they may be heading against the grain before issuing whitelisting. Most developers are willing to work with us which is great and works out for everyone. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Jesse Stay jesses...@gmail.com wrote: Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit easie r to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a business on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant, Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi http://twitter.com/BrantTedeschi
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
Obviously I can't address the impact since we don't have a document to deliver. Let me be clear, we are not thinking of taking functionality from the offering, but we are discussing how open we want to be moving forward. Most of the talks are around what we want to offer through the Streaming API and to whom should those privileges be extended. We are not concentrating our efforts on whom can we restrict and why? Remember we built this company on being open and to that we are committed, especially within the API team. We are very conscious that you developers are a little weary of our plans but rest assured we want to augment the ecosystem and its abilities rather than contract our offering. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Justyn Howard justyn.how...@gmail.comwrote: What are the chances that this new TOS will negate any of the hard work we’ve done up until this point? Can you give us an idea of what will be protected? It’s a little alarming to hear that Twitter might decide to reserve functionality that the developer network has built-on and enhanced in favor of internalizing as business assets. As there has been no TOS in place other than the general Twitter TOS, many of us have spent countless hours and $$ trying to build businesses around Twitter. Not trying to be an alarmist, just curious what this will ultimately mean for us? Justyn On 6/9/09 8:51 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: The API TOS is currently in development. It is taking longer than hoped as we are still exploring what we want to give to developers and what we want to protect as business assets. For now, make sure that you understand the general TOS we have in place. We do work with developers if they are willing to answer our attempts to reach out before shutting them off due to TOS violations. We also try to understand what developers are doing and how they may be heading against the grain before issuing whitelisting. Most developers are willing to work with us which is great and works out for everyone. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Jesse Stay jesses...@gmail.com wrote: Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit easier to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a business on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant, Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating
[twitter-dev] Re: Twitter Application Usage Guidelines, Please Read
I second that. 2009/6/10 Justyn Howard justyn.how...@gmail.com What are the chances that this new TOS will negate any of the hard work we’ve done up until this point? Can you give us an idea of what will be protected? It’s a little alarming to hear that Twitter might decide to reserve functionality that the developer network has built-on and enhanced in favor of internalizing as business assets. As there has been no TOS in place other than the general Twitter TOS, many of us have spent countless hours and $$ trying to build businesses around Twitter. Not trying to be an alarmist, just curious what this will ultimately mean for us? Justyn On 6/9/09 8:51 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: The API TOS is currently in development. It is taking longer than hoped as we are still exploring what we want to give to developers and what we want to protect as business assets. For now, make sure that you understand the general TOS we have in place. We do work with developers if they are willing to answer our attempts to reach out before shutting them off due to TOS violations. We also try to understand what developers are doing and how they may be heading against the grain before issuing whitelisting. Most developers are willing to work with us which is great and works out for everyone. Thanks, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Jesse Stay jesses...@gmail.com wrote: Doug, where is the developer API TOS? I think that's part of the problem - none of us are being required to enter into an agreement before developing, therefore we have no idea what we can and can't do with it. I also don't think most of us even know where any such TOS is, if there is one. I agree that the OAuth application process should make this a bit easier to manage, and help developers know more about what they are getting into before starting their applications. Personally, I want to make sure I'm following the rules of the API. I'd also prefer to know what I'm agreeing to before starting a business on top of it. I feel for the developers of the 2 mentioned apps because, *if* they are violating any TOS, they probably had no idea they were doing so before spending so much time developing it. (even if I disagree with the premise of those apps) @Jesse On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Brant, Thank you for your concern. This is something that bothers us as well. Moving applications exclusively to OAuth-based authentication will certainly help in restricting applications that abuse the service. If you find a service that you think is violating our TOS, please email a...@twitter.com or send a message to @twitterapi and we can take a look. As you mentioned, Del is great but she is but one person. We do have an abuse team forming to help quickly identify which services are violating our TOS. All in all we have a lot of work to do so please do help where you can. Cheers, Doug On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brant btedes...@gmail.com wrote: This message will hopefully get back to the people who run Twitter API development and spam prevention. I noticed there are quite a few twitter applications that are developed to abuse the service and violate their TOS. They do not hide what their purpose is, yet these applications remain active. I contacted twitter.com/delbius http://twitter.com/delbius who heads Twitter Spam prevention and she said that they do revoke API access to abusive applications. But I don't think they are taking an aggressive stance against them. Abusive Applications: http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ http://www.twollo.com/ The combination of these two applications is for outright abuse of the service. They have been around for several months and are known applications to abuse the service with. To make matters worse, Twitter suspends accounts of the people who use these applications rather than targeting the root of the problem, the applications themselves. (Sound counterproductive? RIAA uses a similar policy by going after end users.) I propose that applications need to be more closely scrutinized and can even be flagged as abusive by users. Instead of creating algorithms that detect abnormal user behavior, why not detect abnormal application behavior. Taking a stronger stance against gray area applications could reduce server load on Twitter (giving real applications faster response time) and reduce manpower to deal with spam prevention. I strongly encourage anyone who develops Twitter applications to send this link around. Thanks for reading, Brant twitter.com/BrantTedeschi http://twitter.com/BrantTedeschi -- cashflowclublondon.co.uk (`-''-/).___..--''`-._ `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' (il),-''
