I think it depends on what measures the site is taking to promote responsible use of the applications. Both applications could be used for good, or bad. I can think of one fairly popular site that is all but endorses spammy behavior and charges users for access to these spammy tools. I don¹t want to point fingers, but my point is, there are probably more abusive apps out there than these two, and it all comes down to how responsibly the sites are guiding users, and if they have any rules in place to get rid of those who abuse it.
On 6/9/09 6:28 PM, "Abraham Williams" <4bra...@gmail.com> wrote: > In briefly checking out Mutuality and Twollo I'm not sure what about them is > abusive. Mutuality says it lets you rapidly modify who you are following to > match who is following you and Twollo auto follows accounts it thinks you > might be interested in. Those are both useful > tools and if used as intended are just that. I can see Twitter banning an > individual user for using the services abusively but not the services > themselves. > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 16:43, Brant <btedes...@gmail.com> 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 <http://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 <http://twitter.com/BrantTedeschi> > >
