September 15, 2013

The Twin Terrors Of Twitter

Pity Robert Stacy McCain. He is beset by vast quantities of Twitterspam and is noting a pattern that distinguishes it from comment or E-mail spam.

Like a surprising number of RSM links these are mildly NSFW.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:20 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

1

I don't really understand Twitter, since I don't participate there. What exactly is he concerned about? If all they do is "follow" him, what's the harm?

Is it because they're filing complaints about him and trying to take his own account offline?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Sep 15 12:33:12 2013 (+rSRq)

2 Not directly, but it's a story because Twitter IS deleting accounts due to fake abuse claims while obvious spambots litter twitter.
Also the bots might have a distorting effect upon the upcoming IPO if they are counted as actual users.
Also bewbies.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Sep 15 14:05:49 2013 (F7DdT)

3

So some person, presumably an enemy, is creating a whole lot of sockpuppet Twitter accounts and making all of them "follow" McCain?

Why would the enemy do that? If the presumption is that the enemy wishes harm upon McCain, how does this harm him?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Sep 15 14:24:42 2013 (+rSRq)

4 Buying phony followers to promote yourself is a violation of Twitter's terms of service; since it's difficult to prove he didn't buy the obviously-fake followers, his account could be suspended temporarily or permanently. It also spams him with notifications about each new follower, making it difficult to find real notifications.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Sun Sep 15 20:40:51 2013 (+cEg2)

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