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
