Today someone tweeted a quote on steve jobs to me. I responded to him referencing the same quote. I got two mentions since Steve Jobs was in both my tweets from an id @RT_steve_jobs . I consider this spam. What would the general opinion be. This does not have any numerics :).
Regards Umashankar Das On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 12:03 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky < zn...@borasky-research.net> wrote: > On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:17:25 +0000, hax0rsteve <hax0rc...@btinternet.com> > wrote: > >> I know a number of people who use twitter as a read only source of >> information (for instance they may follow only news outlets and celebrity >> tweeters) and therefore may have large follow counts with zero tweets. >> >> This may not be a use case that you are familiar with, but it is a valid >> use case. >> >> Also, I don't know if you are aware of the current limits on following, >> etc, which are described here, my apologies if you already are : >> >> http://support.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/15364 >> >> >> As for the OP, well, a) if this is what you (or your users) want, just >> parse >> the follow messages looking for numerical postfixes and offer the user >> the user the option to block them, there is no need for an API call >> specifically to do this. >> >> And b) again, you are missing a use case, there are lots of genuine >> accounts >> that have numerics postfixed to them, some people use birth years, and >> some >> people - perhaps finding that the screen name they wanted is not available >> in a naked form - will have chosen [screen name]76 or some similar format, >> or picked a year with some historical connection with their chosen name. >> >> It is not safe to simply assume that ending with numerics is sufficient to >> indicate that the account is used only in the delivery of spam, be that >> tweet >> spam or simply follow spam. >> >> While the assumption may hold in a large number of cases - and I am not >> aware >> of any empirical data that shows what this number is, though I'd be >> interested >> to see one - it will undoubtedly include some false positives. >> >> HTH >> >> hax0rsteve >> >> On 25 Mar 2011, at 15:00, Adam Green wrote: >> >> What if Twitter just suspended anyone who followed more than 1,000 >>> users without ever having tweeted? But then their membership would >>> sink dramatically. How about not allowing following past 100 users >>> without tweeting at least once. What is the point of these accounts >>> anyway, unless they are being built up and then sold? They can't be >>> used for spam, since they don't tweet, and generally don't have URLs >>> in their profiles. >>> >>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Dean Collins <d...@cognation.net> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Lol, someone want to write me an app that blocks all users where their >>>> username ends with two or three numbers. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> This is getting ridiculous. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Seems like something that would be pretty easy to achieve via the API >>>> don’t >>>> you think? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> >>>> Dean >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Twitter developer documentation and resources: >>>> http://dev.twitter.com/doc >>>> API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi >>>> Issues/Enhancements Tracker: >>>> http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list >>>> Change your membership to this group: >>>> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Adam Green >>> Twitter API Consultant and Trainer >>> http://140dev.com >>> @140dev >>> >>> -- >>> Twitter developer documentation and resources: >>> http://dev.twitter.com/doc >>> API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi >>> Issues/Enhancements Tracker: >>> http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list >>> Change your membership to this group: >>> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk >>> >> > 1. There are plenty of good spam detection and filtering algorithms. The > ones listed here, however, are simple hacks unlikely to work without > extensive manual intervention. The same can be said for ManageFlitter, > TwitCleaner and similar services. They give you a start, but you still have > to wade through hundreds or thousands of positives to weed out the keepers. > > 2. A first name followed by a few numbers is a common legitimate screen > name - just having a name like that isn't necessarily an indication of a > spammer. Here's how it works - Bobby asks Kelly if she's on Twitter. Kelly > says "No" and signs up. She starts with the screen name "Kelly", finds it's > taken, so she adds her age or the year she was born. If that's taken too, > she'll maybe get clever and pick something like "PiercedChick", or she'll > pick a few random numbers and get in as "Kelly117". (Now don't go blaming me > if you start getting followers with names like "PiercedChick117.") > > 3. The User / Twitter spam reporting process could definitely be improved > with a few simple steps. I don't have any data - that would have to come > from inside Twitter - but the two most common types of spam I see is > spambots riding Trending Topics and spambots replying to keywords. In either > case, the actual spam tweets sent are usually easily found via Twitter > Search. Given that, what I do when I get a spam tweet is perform the search, > then go through the resulting page and manually report a page or so, > depending on how much time I'm willing to spend on this. > > So here's what I'd propose: Twitter sets up an email address or some other > mechanism to receive these search patterns. When someone gets spammed, they > can send a copy of the tweet to Twitter, in addition to doing a "block and > report" on the spammer. Twitter could then create the search pattern, run > the query and suspend the accounts automatically. > > What would be even nicer would be if we could report an individual tweet as > spam directly from Search or the timeline. But that's a bigger software > engineering task. > -- > http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net > > "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul > Erdős > > -- > Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc > API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi > Issues/Enhancements Tracker: > http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list > Change your membership to this group: > http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk > -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
