NextInstinct's dashboard

This happened before and was corrected. But now, its happening again. Is there another glitch in the matrix? Who broke Twitter?

Aren't you a sweetheart? :) I didn't break Twitter... I leave that to the high volume folks! ;) – GeekMommy, 5 days ago

I always get email alerts *unless* the new follower is a "Twitter Slut" - someone who's following tens of thousands of people. There's obviously a whole in the Twitter code that allows these people, generally spammers, to add you to the list of people they follow and bypass the email alert.

Happy Mother's Day GeekMommy! Did you break Twitter again? I have no idea who is following me since Friday. But do I really care? Hey Goldfoot... what's the deal? Are you keeping secrets again?

Yes, spammers do do that, there are even systems that actually OCR CAPTCHA's (which the more "sophisticated" they become only manage to keep out more real humans more efficiently - CAPTCHA has always been a dead-end keeping out humans quite efficiently, too). Looking at "multiple accounts from the same IP address" will of course also not work - spammers so far are only testing the waters here, it seems, but they'll use all the devices already used in other contexts, including botnets of zombied machines to have an endlessly varying pool of IP addresses to post from. Dealing with spammer is always an arms race - it has begun, you can't stop that. - All you can try to do is anticipate by looking at their techniques in other contexts, as well as successful anti-spam (but not anti-human) techniques. – Marjolein Katsma, 6 days ago

What will the spammers do in response? My point about having two ways to vote actually addresses that (think of spammers taking "revenge" for having their accounts marked as spam). It is a concern, but it goes both ways, also giving real humans a way to counteract spammers' revenge. – Marjolein Katsma, 6 days ago

Kee Hinckley brings up a good point about "what will the spammers do in response?" This is definitely something to keep in mind when looking at how to tackle this problem - and voting accounts as either spam or not spam is going to be exploited.

As an example, I've read various reports of spammers hiring people to overcome manual intervention sections of sites where completely automated creation of accounts was failing - for example, answering challenge questions, solving CAPTCHAs, etc (sorry, it was a while ago so I'm not sure where I read it, just remember that I did!).

You can do "yes" voting without a reputaion system, and even that probably would not be enough. Otherwise the spammers will simply set up bot accounts to vote yes.

The key to coming up with any anti-spam idea is to consider what the spammers will do in response. Often the response is worse than the current problem.

Always keep in mind that the spammers have essentially infinite accounts and bandwidth and need only an infintesimal response rate. Solutions that slow them down or cut them off quickly are best.

Like others, I'm worried about a completely automated mechanism where an account would be removed when a "sufficient" number of "spam" votes has been received. A few thoughts:

* In the web interface provide TWO buttons: one "spam" and one "not spam" so people can "vote" either way. When the "spam" vote is higher by a certain amount or percentage than "not spam", FLAG that member's updates so others can jump in to either confirm or vote "not spam". One person one vote, you could even change your mind by voting the other way, but you still get one vote. Then human review by Twitter after some period, if the "spam" vote is still (considerably) higher than the "not spam" vote - otherwise just "expire" the voting and flagging. This would go some way towards preventing someone being removed as spammer merely because a bunch of people dislike the member, and might also reduce the amount of effort needed for review by/on behalf of Twitter.

* For the IM/phone interface provide two commands that are equivalent in action to the "spam"/"not spam" buttons on the web interface.

* The IM/Phone interface would also need a command to block-in-track so that a "keyword spammer" won't get through anymore (regardless of whether the blocked account is/will be seen officially as a spammer)

I realise that "block in track" as an option is a separate discussion, but it ties in closely, so I'm mentioning it here merely as a reference.

By allowing voting both ways with some checks and balances in trigger levels and elapsed time, followed up with evaluation, I think all-too-hasty banning of what looks like a spammer (or someone who is merely disliked by a group) would be prevented. It wouldn't be fast, but I think that's a good thing. With many "not spam" votes, a review might not be necessary; but for a review a suspected spammer might be given a chance to defend their case (unless it's too blatantly obvious, maybe).

My 2 cents:
* I would like an easy way to report when accounts are bothersome. Not just spammers (like "successstories" which seem to be one) but also 'twittergatherers' or whatchacallum. I mean people who just seem to hoard twitterers. It should of course be clear that reporting doesn't automatically mean that those accounts will leave your followers-list.
* I am worried (as others have already said) that the punishment for alleged spamming is immediate removal. I would like to see human intervention and maybe a 1 warning system. For example: I use stumbleupon and twitterfeed to let my friends as well as my own memory know when I found a nice site. This can be seen as spam. However, I do not feel this is spam! And many others would agree.
* the idea of voting in some way what is spam might be nice or it might be chaos, depending on the way it is executed. A lot of 'is so' 'is not' can occur.
* It might also help to be able not just to block a person (which means 'never again') but also to unblock without having to follow someone first. Maybe a way to remove someone as a follower (but not block) will be more helpfull in many cases in addition (not as a replacement) to the block button.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on the subject. Please excuse my English if it isn't all that clear or correct (I do have a splitting headache and English isn't my native language).
I am curious as to where this all will lead...

This is a great idea! – Marjolein Katsma, 7 days ago

cupcakes are yucky! Why all these sticky-sweet things? I changed my profile because I didn't want to be one of them! (runs of for a chunk of cheese) – Marjolein Katsma, 7 days ago

Oh, good! I was worried it was just my account. Yep. It's happened again.

Broken again for several days. One here, one there, but not all
are being received. Any update?
Thank You.

Very strange, I'd be curious to learn what's causing it when you figure it out.

No older link at all here. Negative. Nada. None.

It is annoying, but there IS a workaround. Go to the broser location bar and put in the page numbers to go backward and forward, like this:

http://twitter.com/home?page=2

Chage "2" to "3" and you'll see older tweets.

It is happening to me too, but on my home page - no way to change the page #. I hope this gets resolved quickly. Not being able to see more than 15 minutes worth of Tweets is discouraging. On top of all of this, Twitter has been eating my tweets the last few days.

I also get that "No Older" too. Makes me want to try a client.

I just signed up for TWITTER and from what i understand my url should be http://twitter.com/yunlefu.....but it says http://twitter.com/twitter
Am i...doing something wrong? Am very upset and I followed instructions as stated.