International Law

Twitter: "an idiot and spam-free zone"

The Guardian asks why there are no spam or trolls on Twitter:

Because it's rather like an RSS feed - you choose to read it - and nobody so far has worked out how to spam a feed.

Twitter, for those not in the know, is a collection of microblogs where people post their minute-by-minute thoughts and actions. Anyone can sign up and start posting "tweets", or updates. Your tweets can be made and viewed via Facebook or your mobile as well as via the website (twitter.com).

However, this is asymmetric, unlike Facebook, which requires you to confirm a friend request before they can see your status updates, which are the same sort of idea as tweets. On Twitter you can choose to follow anyone whose tweets catch your eye; and similarly, unless you limit your tweets only to your friends, anyone can follow you even if you choose not to follow them. Not everyone follows everyone who follows them. You follow?

Given the number of trolls, fools and idiots on the internet, Twitter is remarkable for being largely idiot-free, as blogger Russell Beattie points out. "Think about any other online community system ever created," he observes at tinyurl.com/2scblt. "All of them have had to deal with the core problem of idiots. Anytime a virtual group gets to a certain size, the morons come."

Spam usually comes in the form of email, and you can find your inbox full of emails from Twitter. But you can change the default setting, which emails you when someone starts following you, when you get a direct message from someone or when Twitter itself sends out a newsletter.

...

On the Twitter stream itself, you can in theory spam users, as Dave Winer notes on his Scripting News blog (tinyurl.com/36vjwz). The reply function means that "you can direct a message with a url to anyone as long as you know their username", he points out. However, unlike ordinary spam, you can block a user who insists on replying to you with offers to boost your penis size.

It's not just ordinary people out there, though. Businesses are Twittering, such as JetBlue, the US no-frills airline, which tweets on new routes and deals on airfares, but as Winer notes, you don't have to follow JetBlue or any other commercial Twitterer. The problem will come once someone works out how to reply to users on a large scale.

Until then, though, Twitter remains, pretty much uniquely on the web, an idiot and spam-free zone.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).