Twitter is the high-tech haiku, the latest and greatest in social services that’s really going to change the way we do everything! Seriously! Not like MySpace, or Facebook, or any of the other things that mass media advertised as the end of everything that came before (but turned out to be advertising platforms loaded with preteens and people who illegally like preteens). Unfortunately the fantastic future is again unfounded, as Twitter is falling to the same problem that paralyzed previous popular sites: spambots and idiots.
 Twitter twittering about people twittering about Twitter |
When even elected officials notice that a new technology exists, it isn’t new. In fact it might not even count as technology – these are the same people who think videomatron games are communist murder-simulators, and they’re not only twittering but finding ways to get their stupid asses fired for it. While it’s an incredible electronic medium for fast-moving or creative people, it’s also ideal for idiots – it doesn’t just not need coherent thought, it actively encourages people to say the first damn fool thing that comes out of what we will for want of a better word call their mind.
The worst thing about these idiots is the number-hunting: they will follow anyone if it’ll make that little number go up. A Terminator could tweet “I’m looking for you so I can pull your arms off and use them to bludgeon your family” and they’d click “Follow” faster than the Flash signing a petition against intelligent gorilla research. And that’s why twitter is being totaled by trash: for every unique user, there are seventy synthetic spambots screwing the server with garbage. In many cases you end up with spambots following each other, each leeching off each other and the fools who click on anyone (or anything) which sends them an invite.
Their strategy is sound: it’s based on stupidity, ego, and laziness – qualities which will never be in short supply. The only thing you can do is decide to not be stupid, vain, or lazy, and sacrifice the small irrelevant number and block every single on of them. Go through your follower list and block every bugger who obviously doesn’t exist.
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Twitter spam from new followers is worse than e-mail spam because it is tough to quickly identify spammers vs. non-spammers. At this point, I assume a new follower is a spammer until proven innocent.
I think I started receiving Twitter spam in early 2009 which is about the time when Twitter went uber-mainstream; which made the opportunity large enough for spammers to start cashing in.
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