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 Pretorius<[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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 >
