Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

This is why I hardly ever use 3rd party sites. Apart from not wanting to force my following,for example, I do not like giving away control of what content is distributed under my name. I know I annoy some of my FaceBook friends by not responding to their invitations.

I have to admit I do not follow everyone that follows me... a good % but not all - just for this reason. I look at what they are sharing and see if it works for me. Twitter is about relating and sharing, not all this type of B.S.

Amen brother. I'm with you.

Amen, Brother, Amen.

I can not imagine how deep your DM box must be with this garbage and the amount of followers that you have. Mine is deep enough with a small percentage of your community.

Receiving the same... and I'm not even following back anyone! There's a business opportunity: Spam filters for twitter!


@cdn

There are spam filters for Twitter... it's called "unfollow."

Otherwise, I agree the third party app use of Twitter is annoying. But as with auto-DMs, I assume people know what they're doing, and I'll simply unfollow if annoyed.

Hear Hear! Well said. I went to protected updates to prevent the deluge but that has severly limited my functionality ;(

Chris, This is a problem, which is why I have set up some elaborate filters for emails from Twitter, to make sure that I only see the useful ones.

Yeah. When I see an app ask me for permission to connect with my Twitter account I click the "Deny" button. Unless I know ahead of time why it needs to connect and exactly what if any tweets it will send out via my account.

Otherwise I figure it is just going to send out one of these spammy tweets.

This is why I long ago marked all messages from Twitter as spam, except for DMs. (And I probably miss half of those too.)

Twitter is free. We get the kind of security and communications quality we pay for. (Maybe they're flooding us with spam now so they can offer us a "premium" spam-free option later... along with all the other actually useful services they've dialed down or retracted completely, like archiving, etc...)

Its not the fault of users? Dont you need to give Twitter permission by logging in to allow 3rd party apps to Tweet through your Twitter user name?

The Twitter spam you mention is very Facebook-like. But I dont see how Twitter can stop it -- can they really prohibit, ban, or block some Tweets over others?

+1 Chris

You're just totally right. I had to clean dozens of followers to have a proper streamline. Now with my about 350 followers, my Twitter doesn't look like my Hotmail inbox anymore.

Anyway, please, keep on. Twitter needs people like you :)

To me, that kind of stuff is for Facebook, not Twitter.

I have a question: so what exactly does it mean when I access a third-party site and click "allow" to connect to my twitter account; that they can then send stuff like this to all my followers? Or did these people send these to you themselves via third-party sites?

It varies depending on the application. Unfortunately, not a lot tell you exactly what they are going to do when they connect to your account. Pay close attention when you do though as a lot do have checkboxes you can uncheck to not update your streams (most people skip right over them so naturally they are checked by default). Monitor your own stream and pay attention to where the posts came from so you can opt out if necessary.

clear out the spam. Twitter Correction. This is great.

Finally! Twitter is the reason why I don't go to forums and spend little time at FB. Don't know if you noticed, Twitter eliminated a ton of spammers this past night. I lost about 12% of my followers.

I don't have a huge following but I DO check my list to weed out the crap.

Thanks Chris. Keep strong!

@onlyinitaly

Word. There are so many SPAM issues with which Twitter must deal, whether it's the various and sundry not-so-titillating porn spammers, abuses of the API, finding that I'm suddenly following people that I don't ever recall following (WTH?), as well as Twitter itself doing its best to weed out the garbage, but in doing so, deleting legitimate followers. It's more than a little frustrating. And, as Tom said a moment ago, if it's this aggravating for me, I can only imagine the AAAAAUUUGGGHHHH! factor that's involved in the management of your feed.

Nice post, Chris. I treat this as if I treat anything else in life: if I get that type of DM it just shows how off-base people are. I just don't follow them. In fact, I even block them. Not trying to be harsh, just trying to make my Twitter experience a place I can control. But I do think Twitter will indeed start being more proactive about this, it's about time.

¡Saludos! Hope Mexico is/was fun.

Tell me about it, I just don't reply, its so obvious when you see it, and your like...what-the-heck, "WHY SHOULD I BUY FROM YOU, I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!".

See you on FF. ( FriendFeed...not friggin' folllow Friday).

Oops, forgot to add my FB profile. That previous comment was mine.

Julio

Agreed! Nonsense like this is what kept me away from Facebook until they gave me the ability to hide it.

Spot on Chris, I have been sucked into using an online service that asks for my Twitter info only to find it has sent a SPAMMY comment to my stream.

I stopped allowing those now.

I totally agree.Blogged it too. Death to the spammers.

@Dirkmshaw

I've noticed at lot of these too and have also recently turned off my autofollow settings - I'm now manually reviewing new followers looking at their profile page and past tweets to see if I want to follow them. More time consuming, but it hopefully will cut down on things like this.

These "status updates" from applications is one of my major gripes about Facebook too. Sometimes it lets you "undo" it, but not always and it doesn't always tell you it is posting somewhere. There are way too many apps that do this (most of which I ignore).

Amen, I had I terrible time just getting settled in with Twitter because of all of the noise and spam. I'm hoping this post makes a inspires the platform to action.

Chris, I couldn't agree more. For a person who is still trying to wade through all the "crap" that is attached to social media it really is troublesome. Moving away from using facebook so you aren't getting poked, or challenged to some trivia game, or any of the other annoying apps that are new there everyday, to find the same or similiar things popping up on twitter is disappointing.

Yes, we all hate spam. But, how do you propose that Twitter will know what messages are spam or keep up with all the new 3rd party sites that will keep popping up as old ones keep getting blocked? As you say, some people are just innocent victims as they might be new and allow unknown sites trick them into giving their Twitter info. Why is Twitter responsible for blocking spam?

If people want to DM you, they can send you an e-mail, right? I don't auto-follow everyone who follows me (but then again, I am a nobody) and I don't expect anyone I follow to auto-follow me back.

You follow ~87,000 people, you are bound to get spam. Being popular sucks.

I actually don't think they have to block proactively, but instead, they should remove access from various URLs that support spam behavior. Playspymaster.com is easy to block, for instance.

Make sense?

My point isn't just about me (never is). My point is that this is when Usenet stopped being interesting and we all quit that.

Well, what do you suggest Twitter do? It's one thing to complain, but doing so without offering a solution is less than helpful. From what I've been hearing from Twitter users, Twitter has been pruning the spammers as of late. I'm not sure what their other plans are, but I'm kind of tired of seeing people complaining without offering solutions. I'm sure Twitter is working on it. Just because it doesn't fit in with your timeframe doesn't mean it's not happening. It's easy to judge.

Mea culpa. I updated my post with the recommendation.

It's not happening fast enough. Not for me. FOr the sake of the service.

Woo! Works for me.

But...You ARE the service. Like I say, if it's not happening fast enough, don't complain, offer a solution (which I see you did). If it's as simple as blocking access to the API ports for certain users, perhaps using your clout (which you do have) to reach @biz & @ev or the dev team is something you should consider. I have a feeling it might be a touch more complicated than that. But I don't know for sure, so it can't hurt to ask.

I go through my (short) list of followers on my accounts once a week and weed out the spammers. Most are easy to tell they follow thousands and have no followers...

Chris, I couldn't agree with you more. The spam is getting out of hand, especially with ignorant and get rich quick users who care nothing about building relationships and being useful, but only how to leverage social media tools to their own end.

I have been spammed recently by the same nonsense message every 2-3 minutes. Twitter says to follow @spam and send them a DM with the user name of the offender(s). I followed @spam but waiting over 24 hours for them to follow me back so I can DM them. We need quicker response and support from Twitter to resolve these issues. I feel like my reputation is at stake even though I had nothing to do with the spam - just having my username in the tweet makes me cringe.

Thanks, I for one did not know how the API - 3d party works. While I have tried to contribute some worthwhile/newsworthy links, comments and tips, for me Twitter is largely a waste of time both for any biz traffic or for any really helpful info, except in rare instances.

However, I stick with it because of those few people, who like you, are offering up great and informative tweets. I would say that amounts to about 3-5% of folks I initially followed. Speaking of which, time to go weeding..

While I totally agree with what you posted, I worry about the immediate backlash effect that people will adopt. Part of the beauty and lure of Twitter is the ability to build relationships and access to people normally inaccessible.

You are spot on. I will likely stop following back, should this continue.

Great post. I know it may not be fair to do so, but as soon as I receive pointless invitations I immediately stop following the person that sent them. I have better reasons to be on Twitter.

@charlottehrb

Amen!

Agreed, Of Course. But it's not just about blocking spam sites. They need a more comprehensive preemptive spam blocking system. Everything from preventing people from taking advantage of trending topic hashtags to individual users who just spam the crap out of you with money making or follower schemes...I can't take it anymore!

People should NOT enter they Twitter credentials as if they were buying bananas... Its ok to do it to trusted parties like Facebook, etc, but there are just too many spammers out there to trust..

Hey Twitter the telcos learned from ISP's what NOT to do when they opened SMS on their networks. Email for awhile was really bad, remember the old days? Twitter, we are not going to become more tolerant of spam, we are becoming less. If telcos let their SMS gateways get prostituted out by spam programmers we would all flock to the one telco who did not. Try and get a MSO license from a telco to become a third party SMS carrier, my cousin has a license and believe me, once you get one, the risk of being cutoff is so great you would never let spammers over your network. Take a lesson from the telcos, not ISP's Twitter and we will keep using you, otherwise, Feedly and FriendFeed become more useful to use everyday.Facebook, I hope you are hearing this too because "Which farm animal are you" is not going to make anyone more enlightened.

Right on.

This is exactly what the early free email services (hotmail, yahoo, etc) discovered: spam protection is an essential part of the service. If you can't protect your users, they will leave.

Twitter should be agressive and proactive: Nip it in the bud now, while it's relatively small. Wait, and they will be facing the same multi-million-dollar annual spam-fighting costs as the ISPs.

You've identified a unique form of Twitter spam: using the @name of someone famous just to draw readers to your feed. It's spam at its worst - because it tries to use the form of personal communicaiton for impersonal promotion.

Good news is that Twitter has been good about shutting down accounts if you report them to @spam

Hey, Chris.

While I agree with your ire against spammers, I think you need to pull back and look at this with a cool head. Like you, I was also dropping people left and right and going with the Block button on people telling me how to increase my numbers and to play Spymaster. (Since when did Twitter want to be Facebook.)

Then i got spammed by Julia Roy (@juliaroy), the hostess of Tweet Week and a really sharp cookie on Twitter. I respect her work and her word, and knew this was NOT her, so I pinged her and asked "Did you know about this?" She didn't. Turns out a LOT of people are becoming unwilling spammers on Twitter because of the Social Media Carpetbaggers who are trying to earn a fast buck and win attention for themselves.

While it is easy to blame the SMCB's I think we as a community also need to be more careful. Twitter has shown that even THEY need to be more careful ("Password" as your server's password? Come on, guys....), but we also need to be wary of sites that....

1. promise followers
2. offer tests for Twitter
3. invite you to play a game

--- and the big'gun ----

4. ASK FOR YOUR PASSWORD

Unless they are tried and true online utilities (i.e. TwitPic, 12seconds, etc.) we must be wary and watch carefully our own feeds. This way, things like this can be avoided. Additionally, I think we as a community need ot step up and do just that: Be a community and watch each other's backs. That's what a community does, and that is what we should do. Report malicious spammers for Twitter and to each other. If a spam tweet is received by someone you know and trust, ping that person. Let them know something is up. The cost of Twitter's success is the SMCBs that crawl out from the muck and slime, and pull shenanigans like this.

So to quote an old favorite from the 80's..."Let's be careful out there."

I loved Hill Street Blues.

Yes, my point above isn't to unfollow the folks who are using the tools (though I also do this often from frustration), but rather that Twitter might seek to monitor their API users and allow me to point out bad 3rd party apps vs bad users to @spam.

Comprende?

Chris,

I think Tee's point is very well taken. Twitter is so new and people are so unfamiliar with it and all the apps built around it, that they hardly know what to look out for. And frankly, Twitter's made it easy to build apps that new ones are cropping up every day.

Unfortunately, the culture of social media has numbed people to question what it is that they're submitting their log-ins/information to and the security of all that information. Twitter has an SSL log-in. How many people know this and use it. I just, at this very moment, discovered that Facebook has this option too...but who thinks to use it? We're all on wireless devices now with packets of info flying everywhere. Why aren't people more concerned about the security of their information? If we were, we might be a little more cautious about using 3rd party applications to begin with.

I also like Tee's suggestion about using the community vigilance to do good. Maybe a board or collective resource could be put together to identify current spam scams to look out for or something like that. Might take a few minutes more than hitting the block button or reporting them to Twitter as spam, but could it help the greater good?

Yeah, unwanted spam DMs are a pain. As the developer of a third party app (untweeps.com), I think it's reprehensible for any app to do anything under the guise of a user's account without full disclosure. And sending tweets or DMs involuntarily is the worst.
I humbly submit that in my app, any tweets sent are totally at the discretion of the logged in user. (Doesn't send DMs, just plain tweets.) A full disclosure of the tweet is displayed and the user must click a button to send it. A person will only send the tweet if they like the product and want their followers to try it. That's how real life word of mouth works.
Developers who abuse the trust of users by these tactics are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Weeding our the twitter trash is a daily routine now much like my inbox with email. I can't wait to see if Wave will shift the tide once more. Loving the new posterous though and microblogging, I think that actually makes people think about what they are saying.

Chris, I agree that it is LONG overdue on Twitter's part to incorporate something as fundamental as blocking tweet spam.

Especially as Twitter becomes more and more mainstream we will always have people who abuse "the system" by either lack of tweet etiquette (genuine newbies who don't know any better...yet) or those whose sole intent is to spam, spam, spam in hopes of profit.

Like you said, a continual onslaught of "junk tweets" can really make you rethink a bit more about the value of using the social media site. It can only benefit Twitter and will definitely benefit the end user...US!

This is an issue that has been brewing for some time and I have been really starting to see it on the account that I help to run for work. We have a similar policy of auto-following for customer contact capability, but have been seeing so many accounts starting to populate our stream and messages with useless spam (and porn) that we are thinking of reconsidering...I just spent 15 minutes removing probably 30-40 accounts just now!
I hope that through of mix of users reacting and not giving any support to this as well as Twitter itself recognizing the impact of this garbage that things will hopefully start to mellow out. *fingers crossed*

Amen and agreed whole heartily. I have turned off email notification of DMs because I receive 100s per day. Most (as in 99%) are auto-DMs.

-Steve aka @implu

I agree that the spam has got to stop! It's worse than my old myspace! I feel like they might be trying to get at a different audience, but I would say that they are failing miserably! Garfield talks about it some in his new book, chaosscenario.net

Chris,
Auto DM spam, irritating. Potential loss of access to my industry's leaders, unacceptable.

When I was new to Twitter you were one of the first people I followed. Truthfully, I didn't really "know" who you were, but I found your content to be extremely valuable; I couldn't figure out why you followed me back, but I appreciated it. I was still in the listening without conversing stage, when I read an @reply in which you referenced your follow policy. Ah, mystery solved!

I've used your example in my own profile management, because it makes sense to me.

Here's the deal - because you followed me back, I have been able to DM you with a question or two. You have always answered, and the information has been very helpful and time saving. I value this access, and I'm frustrated that Twitter has endangered it by their slow response to DM spam.

I'm not a fan of auto DM's for any purpose, let alone for spamming. I don't use automation in any of my Twitter interaction; it just feels wrong to me. If I send a message - it's me, in real time, typing and choosing to @ you. I'm small enough that I have this luxury. I don't DM information about anything unless I have good reason to do so. I choose not to use 3rd party sites so that I can avoid this very thing. I hold the owners of these profiles accountable for the results of their 3rd party involvement - but I also hold Twitter accountable for protecting their platform - maybe they'll get on that, huh?

Hate the Links in DM's, especially the auto follow ones so intrusive....

I think this is the problem with following everyone back (I think you once said you use SocialToo to automate it).

You're opening yourself up to spammers. Choosing manually who to follow has a better success rate for stopping this crap. I don't think I've had a bunch of spammy messages in a while.

I agree. I do not auto follow in return but will usually follow anyone who says hi. (Apologies if I've missed anyone in this strategy. Feel free to pull me up on it.)

By the way, not sure if this NY Times article helps or hinders the cause.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/twitte...

-Steve aka @implu

Dude, that app specifically said it would not share results without permission. I won't be playing that again. So sorry.

I'm sick of the "i'm taking a shower" or "eating a baloney sandwich" or the ever popular "hanging w/ my peeps" tweets in addition to the spam There's just too much nonsense, making it too much work. Period.

@ACruiseGuy Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! You may not like those tweets, but we can't have Twitter censoring for content when it prunes spam. What if someone labels YOUR tweets nonsense? Then you'd be out of luck.

I agree: the API abuse is ridiculously widespread and growing. I understand the desire for people to play games like the spy and mafia ones--that type of system is, afterall, what drives a large part of Facebook and MySpace membership. However, the rest of us, those who don't want to play such games or participate in trivia and quizzes, should have the ability to opt out of, or hide, tweets and DMs regarding these services--much like we can on Facebook. Blip.fm, the first mass "join me" to invade Twitter (in my recollection) is as annoying as the mafia and spy games and should also be eligible for opting out or hiding.

Amen Chris!

Twitter should disallow the use of their API for any automated tweets even for helpful services, like MrTweet. A robotic tweet is just so useless and cluttersome, regardless of the intent.

I agree with this. I'm getting really sick of the spam on Twitter. I've actually been having issues with reply spam. A ton of junk (read: porn) accounts are retweeting a stupid post from a friend that includes my name and Harry Potter. I've reported and blocked upwards of thirty accounts since it was posted on Sunday. This spam is getting ridiculous and highly annoying.

Spam is the reason I'm an early adopter and drop when everyone catches on. Just saying.

I know it's kind of annoying, but the problem is, this is probably how Twitter is going to make money.

Right now, Twitter has NO PLANS FOR REVENUE. However, they are allowing 3rd party to use the API for this purpose. Thing is, the spamming thing is how Twitter might plan on making a revenue.

Perhaps it is time for Twitter to have a white list of approved vendors who access the API? I realize this will create an obstacle for new startups to access Twitter, but it'd go a very long way of keeping out spammers. Either that or allow a web apps a one-time access so that 3rd parties can't start automatically posting spam into our streams.

I can't agree more. And that's only one type of spam. It's getting crazy how much unwanated spam we are exposed too. I recorded a 2 minute tweetcast about this very thing recently. How far will it go? Listen at http://bit.ly/16Rw8m

This is pretty similar to what I stumbled upon a few days ago: http://www.sebastianjohnsson.com/a-word-of-caut...

What makes those tweets so stupid? Some people like trivia and games, its not spam, these people are trying to engage you in conversation. If you dont like their tweets then dont follow them, but asking you what city you would like to live in is not spam. Chill out bro! Give 'em a break, just hit delete.

What you might consider spam may not be spam to the person who sent it to you. If the spam came directly from the 3rd party site, then they should definitely be made to walk the gang plank. If you get it from someone you follow, then you hope the person knows you and acts accordingly.

This is why I don't follow everyone who follows me. I "follow" those people via my Google Reader. If it's a private account, then I think how useful is their information to me before hitting the follow button.

Chris,

Thank you for speaking out about the unfortunate abuse of the Twitter culture that placed a premium of connecting our humanness.

Hollis Thomases, @hollisthomases and I are also seeing another abuse and the term that best describes it is "tweet-jacking".

Users are posting tweets without citing the originating blogger's name, blog name or Twitter handle. Their action appears to be an intentional action to mis-lead others. I have seen many who also appear to ignore the blogger's "Re-Tweet" button.

Here is Hollis' post: http://bit.ly/zRawH

to an extent, Twitter is already very addictive and generates a lot of messages. Questions raised around productivity and attention span are definitely valid. That kind of spam behaviour and other spy master and what nots is even worse and makes you wonder whether the tool will be able to survive the hype. Can't agree more, abuse should be blocked.

I totally agree with the post sentiment. I held an open ended discussion with some programmers at Barcamp Chicago two weeks ago in fact.

URL blocking is too simplistic and won't solve the problem. API's must be licensed and monitored for the community to judge how much or how little value is added to the community. People who abuse the API should be banned. People who do things that add value should be rewarded! API access should not be free to everyone, it is after all a privledge to utilize private property, it's time the private property owners treated it as such.

this is why the wordpress plugin Akismet so popular, but as a blogger, you have to spent many times to write and have to spend time on distinguish spam.

I don't spend much time on Facebook - I don't want virtual teddy bears and fights with Vampyres and Werewolves - I agree we don't need them on Twitter.

Amen to stopping these! It appears this has just recently escalated in the past couple of weeks. Mafia Wars, Twitter Army recruiting, and the "I just gave @<twitte_raccount_name_here_please> a <enter random object>, they should send me a gift ;)" direct message simply need to stop!

Thanks Chris for the post!

Expecting Twitter to somehow restrict people/companies from Spamming is kind of like expecting the postal service to not deliver junk mail. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I've always respected the policy of you follow me/I'll follow you. But you can pretty much get a feel for how someone is using Twitter to communicate by looking at their first page of posts and then make a decision if they are inline with what you are all about. Harder to do if you are Chris Brogan because of the volume, but I believe it's necessary for the community to establish the rules of who to follow/not follow and weed out the Spammers by defining value filters. No value in the most recent 20 posts, no follow. Maybe it's not that easy.

I agree. I do not auto-follow. Instead I only follow people who @ me with interesting discussion. I also ban anyone who sends me this type of spam.

I'm afraid any open system like Twitter will always be overrun by obnoxious marketers who go for volume of messages and percentage of responses, rather than quality, trustworthy interactions.

I've had very little to post at Twitter since creating an account, frankly, and yet I've had to block a multitude of followers. I can only imagine how you high-number-of-followers work to screen things out.

Ironic how these productivity and communication apps become large-scale distractions in short time...

Sounds remarkably like Izea's Pay-Per-Tweet or Pay-Per-Post - unwanted, unauthentic messages junking up the In box or blog feed, pretending to be real comments or opinions.

It's all pollution, Chris. Glad you're beginning to see it.

If you claim you don't, please re-read your own post above in 2 years ;)

I am with you.. I am female and I don't use third party and I also follow only those I know or do business with, however every few days the same 102 follows show up EVEN AFTER BEING BLOCKED.. they are from an obvious porn site and I have to go in ONE by ONE to delete them. Forget asking twitter for help with this.. I can't even group block them or do a group delete

whats worse is this group does not even show up on my twitter computer page (just the following count) and are on my Iphone only, when I go to find them on the site.. they do not turn up.. this is becoming annoyinbg a time consuming

I follow everyone back, but aggressively un-follow annoying people who only publish their blog feed or send me annoying DM's. If I am getting driven nuts with only 3500 followers you must be driven INSANE! Sorry Chris!

Chris
Before I read this post I had already started implenting theis unfollow process on my twitter account. It has never made any sense to follow everybody back & realisticly have a genuine connection with thousnads of friend/follow ratio. To me it's way more powerful and effective to have a smaller group of very valuable friends vs thousands of very superficial follows just following you for the flippin hell of it! In my book, you just earned a ton of respect points for having the courage to stand up for whats right. Thank You!

Twitter should add "Report Spam" button right next to "Reply" and "View Tweet" in the search results

Hi Chris, use these 4 simple steps to get rid of Twitter spam via DMs

http://idaconcpts.com/2009/11/04/twitter/