Joost Schuur's dashboard

Joost Schuur asked a question in Ping.fm on June 05, 2008 00:02:

Facebook password reset after installing ping.fm application

I just got an email from Facebook claiming they had to reset my Facebook account password 'for security reasons'. The email is legit and not a phishing attempt, and comes only a day after I added Facebook support to ping.fm. Any chance installing or using the ping.fm Facebook app caused them to freak out?

It's unclear so far if there's a direct correlation between the two, but I rarely use Facebook for much of anything, and ping.fm was the only recent app I installed. I posed the question to their contact address and will post the response I get from them here.

Joost Schuur started following the idea "Please bring back "Invite Keys" for Wiki 2.0!" in PBwiki.

A comment on the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

I'm curious as to what happened to the option too. I've been using it a few times since it turned up. – Joost Schuur, on April 18, 2008 19:23

Joost Schuur started following the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter.

Joost Schuur replied on April 10, 2008 19:56 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

As discussed in the previous thread, one person's spam isn't another. I would actually offer 2 different options to users that block people: Mark as 'spam', or something like 'I don't care for this person's content'. That way you don't get people who just don't want to be followed by someone reposting lumping their complaints under spam. This would allow you to weight a spam score that, when triggered, could shut down an account for a review.

A block link should be included directly in the email notifying you about a new follower (maybe call it 'review this follower', so you're not implying you need to make up your mind about blocking a user from the notification email along). It would then lead to a page with the 2 options above. The page to block a user should include that user's last 5-10 tweets, so someone can get a feel for the kind of updates they do, including their homepage URL.

Lastly, if you're going to act in any way on spam users by removing their access or accounts, there should be a clear posting (not hidden in the TOS) that explains what spam is to people.

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Ditto. I hope I won't have to use it too much, but it's good to hear the latest official word. – Joost Schuur, on April 10, 2008 04:37

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Not just one, but TWO of them! http://www.twitterspam.com/ – Joost Schuur, on April 10, 2008 04:37

Joost Schuur replied on April 09, 2008 22:19 to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Mike (mdoeff here) may have been too modest to pimp his own blog here, but he's been finding some good twitter spam links and posting them to his link blog.

There's even a whole blog called Stop Twitter Spam.

Joost Schuur replied on April 09, 2008 22:00 to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

BTW, http://twitter.com/ForSaleByOwner is still up and looks very spammy.

Joost Schuur marked one of crystal's replies in Twitter as useful. crystal replied to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?". Joost Schuur and 2 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Joost Schuur marked one of crystal's replies in Twitter as useful. crystal replied to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?". Joost Schuur and 2 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Joost Schuur replied on April 09, 2008 21:58 to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Hi Crystal. Thanks for clarifying and keeping us up to date.

You talked about individuals writing in under #5. Are you referring to the 'Twitter, Help!' form at http://twitter.com/help? Would this be a 'request' style contact?

Other than the PR & partners email addresses, I don't see any other direct contact method published.

Joost Schuur marked one of mdoeff's replies in Twitter as useful. mdoeff replied to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?".

Joost Schuur replied on April 08, 2008 17:51 to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Get Satisfaction is a great way to combine official support, with interactions of other community members who use the product as well and who can add their spin on an issue or come up with alternate suggestions. As a third party service that is used by many companies, it comes with its own account system.

I think Arno would have been less frustrated if we had some kind of official comment from someone at Twitter on this, especially since the spam situation seems to have gotten worse lately, and this is actually billed as the official support channel for them.

Reporting spam is a tricky business. If there were a 'this is spam' checkbox next to the block button (which should be more prominently promoted), who's to say everyone agrees on what is truely spam and what not?

If someone decides to launch an official twitter feed, where all they do is tie it into their RSS feed for their blog, and then mass-add as many people as they can find, I don't think that's the same kind of spam than someone creating a viagra twitter account and adding a bunch of pharmacy site links. But some people would tag both as such.

A scaled down approach would be to explain the block option better, offer more clarity on how they identify spam, and provide one official thread here, where spam twitter users can be reported manually if it's outright, commercial spam on a trial basis, and see how much that gets used.

A response from a Twitter rep would be great, although Crystal did already explain their policy as of 4 months ago here.

Joost Schuur asked a question in Twitter on March 28, 2008 20:32:

How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?

This twitter user added me today, and it's an obvious spam attempt: http://twitter.com/ForSaleByOwner.

I can block him for myself, but is there a preferred way to point these out on an official basis, or do you already investigate based on the block count?

Joost Schuur marked one of quepol's replies in Twitter as useful. quepol replied to the question "Could you please give users the option to turn off "Tips"?".

Joost Schuur asked a question in Twitter on December 06, 2007 23:43:

How are @ messages that aren't replies handled by the new @reply setting?

I've read the help article for the new setting for @replies management, but it's not entirely clear to me if the default of only seeing @replies for people I'm following covers any usage of @, or just those where the message is an actual reply.

Consider '@foo I have a case of the mondays too' vs. 'Hanging out at Ritual with @tweedle and @dum'.

I may not want to see direct replies to someone else's comment when I don't know what the message was, but I do want to see when my friends talk about something and just reference other people without it being a real 'reply'.

Are the replies handled by the setting just messages that start with @someone, as opposed to use it in the middle of the message? Even that doesn't cover '@foo and I are hanging out at Sbux'.

Actually, what I'd really want, is a setting for some kind of expandable layer on the site that shows me the message that an @reply was a reply for, for quick access, rather than hitting the link. Or maybe just a mouse over affect for the 'in reply to' link.

It would also be nice to see a little reminder on my home page of how many messages I'm currently missing out on, due to my setting options.