Will We See An Increase In Twitter Spam Reports?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Comments (4)

WebProNews paints a rosy picture of a new spam reporting tool on Twitter. I’m not so optimistic, however.

Previously, all you had to do to report spam was to follow the @spam account and send a message to them about a particular Twitter profile to notify them of spam. A small discomfort, but it seemed to work. At least it worked for me. Now, Twitter has put a link on each profile’s home page inviting people to report that profile for spam. I see room here for abuse.

If Company A and Company B are competitors and Company A employs 150 Twitterers while Company B employs only one, things could get nasty if Company A decides to report Company B for spam. Imagine all 150 employees clicking Company B’s link. Do you think Twitter would disable Company B’s account? I hope not, but I’m betting they would.

This could happen on a large scale. I’m all for making spam reporting easy, but to invite spam reports in this manner is asking for trouble. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Comments (4) Category: Social & Viral Marketing

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4 Comments

Comment by Cory

Made Wednesday, 14 of October , 2009 at 9:08 am

I agree. Putting a link on profile pages to report spam is bound to get abused. If Twitter stays with this system, there needs to be more “looking into it” if an account receives a large number of spam reports. Twitter admin needs to look at the account being reported and look at their Tweet history. If the person is valid and not spamming then the account should be left alone.

Something are better left alone than reinventing the wheel.

Interesting to see how this plays out!

Thanks for the info.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 14 of October , 2009 at 9:31 am

Hi Cory,
Very good point, there should be a “looking into it” type of feature…thanks for reading and your comment!

Comment by Spyros Papaspyropoulos

Made Wednesday, 14 of October , 2009 at 11:42 am

I agree too. I think you have a point there Nick

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 14 of October , 2009 at 2:29 pm

Thanks Spyros for reading!