Nadyne

why is Twitter spam so obnoxious?

4 Comments

Twitter spam seems to raise our collective hackles more than any other kind of spam. I admit it: I whinge when I get Twitter spam.  But I observed last week, after engaging in such a whinge, that I’d never dream of doing the same every time I get email spam.  I’ve even asked here whether a particular behavior was Twitter spam1.

Every time I get Twitter spam, I dutifully report it.  I’m never sure if it does any good, but I do it anyway.  Last week, Marco Arment commented on Twitter spam and motivation to report it, concluding that he’s not going to bother to report it any longer because it just seems like a waste of time.  I don’t share his assumption that Twitter isn’t doing anything (or isn’t doing enough), so I still report.  His post is one example of a perception that Twitter spam is a big problem, and that it’s only getting worse.

I don’t have numbers about Twitter spam, so I’m not sure whether it actually is a big problem, let alone one that’s getting worse.  The perception of the problem is one that I find fascinating.  Why is it that Twitter spam bothers us so much?  My theory2 is that there are several aspects of it that, together, make it bloody obnoxious.

A lot of Twitter spam is keyword spam.  There are some keywords that are guaranteed to get you spam responses: iPad, iPhone, laptop, etc.  It’s really galling to know that I’m going to tweet something and be entirely (and often accurately) convinced that I’m going to get spammed in response.  Compare this to email spam: there’s no obvious link between my action and the spam.  The spam that I get in email has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever done, it’s just an indiscriminate firehose.  I’ve been getting a bunch of Viagra spam on my blog post about appearing on the Angry Mac Bastard podcast, but while I find that amusing, it’s probably coincidence.

Twitter spam is addressed directly to me, and mentions/replies to @nadyne are designed to get my attention.  They’re supposed to be so important that they get their own stream, and I never skip reading @nadyne references.  I’ve seen people get testy when there’s some kind of contest or promotion that asks people to tweet something, but that’s rare, and I haven’t observed the same level of vitriol about that behavior as I have for the usual Twitter spam.  Email spam, while it might be addressed directly to me, isn’t highlighted in the same way, it’s just part of my inbox.

I can’t really scan past Twitter spam because it’s identical to everything else.  When I read my email, I scan my inbox to see what I can immediately delete.  Email spam is often, although not always, obvious enough that I can just read the sender/subject and delete it without wasting any more attention on it.  On the other hand, Twitter spam is roughly identical to the rest of Twitter.  While I’m probably not devoting any more time to reading Twitter spam than I am reading the subject line of email spam, I don’t feel as annoyed by email spam because the time spent on the subject of the email is much less than the time that I’d spend actually reading the email.

Are there other aspects of Twitter spam that make it feel so much more obnoxious than other forms of spam?

  1. And, for the record, the overwhelming agreement was that it was spam. Most of the responses came in via Twitter, which isn’t surprising. ↩
  2. As a researcher, I must point out that I have no data whatsoever to back up this theory. ↩

4 thoughts on “why is Twitter spam so obnoxious?”

  1. Sending outside junk e-mail might get you money on automation together with minimal are employed at many. I discovered this particular blog on Google and i am getting quite a few $ $ $ $ with five min’s of work on a daily basis. Try it out on how to spam and enjoy.

    Nadyne’s comment: I’m too amused at the irony of getting spam on this blog post, so I approved the comment (but, of course, edited out the links).

  2. The key question is whether Twitter is motivated to tackle SPAM. If they were motivated they could filter identified SPAM at the server side once n individuals have flagged a suer for SPAM.
    Alternatively, the Twitter client (or any third-party client) could do some client-side filtering. There is likely a few simple heuristics that would give a reasonable level of accuracy. The client could then render the likely SPAM tweets in a darker/lighter colour so that the tweet is easier to skim past.

  3. This post is an irony magnet. Check out this tweet that I got in response to my tweet about this post:

    @nadyne You way want to check out [URL edited] -an effective but easy to use comment spam filter for blogs. Also comes as a WP plugin.

  4. Nadyne, I believe the current spate of @-reply spam is a attempt to not move product but annoy Twitter users. We all pay attention to @-replies and when it’s spam it’s very intrusive. Makes for a bad user experience. The spam is so unveiled and I’ve never been tempted to look at it or buy a product via that method, but the spam continues. Yes, I report every occurrence. I believe that @Spam and @Safety are working to remove the spam accounts. However, creating a new account is simple; using automated tools to use the API is simple.

    Someone hates Twitter and is working overtime to destroy our user experience via unwelcome spam.

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