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Twitterfeed as spam engine
How can I prevent someone else from using Twitterfeed for spamming purposes?
I'm on a Laconica server and someone is misbehaving by dumping links from Twitter, through Twitterfeed to TWIT Army. I think Twitterfeed should prevent such misbehavior.
I'm on a Laconica server and someone is misbehaving by dumping links from Twitter, through Twitterfeed to TWIT Army. I think Twitterfeed should prevent such misbehavior.
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Inappropriate?More often than not issues like these are down to mistakes - have you tried contacting the owner of the account?
You'll appreciate that a) it's not really feasible for me to check what gets posted through twitterfeed, and b) abuse/spam is usually being handled at the twitter and/or laconica end (i.e. if you abuse the twitter or laconica/identica service).
twitterfeed, being in effect just a twitter client, isn't really qualified to decide what should or shouldn't be posted to these services. But having said this, if you let me know the laconica account being posted to I'll take a look and see what the issue is.2 Comments
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This is a clear case of abuse. It's irritating a lot of people and it reflects poorly on Twitterfeed, which by the way I just donated to a few days ago. -
If it's a clear case of abuse, could you at least let me know some details? Without this I have no way of even looking at the issue.
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Inappropriate?The Laconica implementation is http://army.twit.tv by Leo Laporte. I'm not a representative, just a user of Twit Army. The offending user is called TechGlance, and he is only available on Twitter, as far as I can see. On Twitter, his user name is techglance.
The problem is that Twit Army is a social community, not a place to dump links to tech articles. TechGlance had promised to stop posting link dumps, but apparently he didn't keep his word. At this moment, his posts are very annoying and people get frustrated with this person's behavior.
I would appreciate if you can look into this.1 Comment Add a comment
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This spammer is also on Identi.ca at http://identi.ca/techglance. It is just the engadget rss feed tweeted all over the place. I have tried to contact engadget, but not received a response yet.
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the additional details. The problem I have is that I don't think I can just shut off this user because some people don't like him posting this.
However, if Leo Laporte or whoever runs this laconica instance for him doesn't like this, they are welcome to contact me, and I could stop this particular user, or even stop twitterfeed posting to the army.twit.tv instance altogether.
I don't mean to be awkward, but I really don't want to set a precedent where twitterfeed decides what and where you're allowed to post to - I think this needs to be decided and handled by the owners of the service that is being posted to. -
Inappropriate?Mario, it's not "some people" who don't like techglance posting on Army, it's everyone! Nobody is impressed by his/her behaviour.
Mus (our word for tweets/dents) from techglance are simple links to news articles, which we can all read perfectly well using our own RSS feed readers. techglance is clearly uninterested in being part of our TWiT Army community. So why on earth did he/she sign up, if it wasn't to spam us?
I reckon Leo Laporte - rightly - would not be comfortable with the notion of vetting every individual who signs up for Army. I think it would also be problematic for him to be forced into deleting a person from his Laconica instance.
What we need is a way to prevent people using twitterfeed to spam Laconica instances. That's clearly what's happening here - techglance is spamming Army. Instead of passing the buck, perhaps your team could work on better methods of blocking spammers? This sort of thing is only going to increase in the future - it won't go away if you ignore it.
Has techglance ever heard of the concept of reciprocity? *Social communities don't work if users are only interested in themselves!*
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I also agree about the techglance spamming irrelevant posts to TwitArmy. I have no need for this type of behavior!
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Inappropriate?kiwinerd - I hear you and agree with you, and as I said I'll be happy to stop twitterfeed being able to post to Army. All I ask is that the owner of that instance contact me and requests this.
I have now privately contacted Leo via twitter DM, and will see what he says.2 Comments Add a comment
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hey mario, I wonder if accountability means making the source visible? It appears this user is posting to twitter via twitterfeed. This must all be coming from a blog? What is this original source? Maybe someone could then communicate with them?
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and by the way, it isn't the posting, it's the manner and frequency that is provoking people IMO
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Inappropriate?I'm another Twit Army user who is bothered by this techglance user. And Laconia presently doesn't appear to have an "admin" panel/function to make deletion easy, so it would involve editing a MySql DB which has risks. Also, this techglance user has NO followers and doesn't follow anyone so that's almost a sure sign of a spammer, and every post to army is just this comment and link.
I’m irritated
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Inappropriate?Thanks! :-)
Might one possible solution be to limit the number of tweets/dents/mus that can be sent per hour from twitter to a laconica instance? Is once per hour a reasonable limit? Perhaps people who have a real need to do it more often could apply for special dispensation?
These problems are really thorny and hard. I'm just a physicist so I don't pretend to know the answers...
Thanks very much indeed for caring. I/we really appreciate the fact that you took time to listen - and do something - about the problem we reported. You're one classy guy.
Warm regards.
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Inappropriate?Agreed, no easy answers to this. Also, what may rightly be perceived as spam on one laconica instance may well be considered acceptable use on another instance (e.g. identi.ca or similar), depending on the context of how they are being used.
I really don't want to pass the buck, but at the same time I don't want to become the arbiter of what is acceptable to post to twitter and/or any laconica instances - but I'm obviously happy to comply with any wishes of the respective owners of these sites. In the same way I recently stopped twitterfeed being able to post feeds originating from twitter back to twitter, because twitter themselves requested it.2 Comments Add a comment
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mario, I think most would agree with you 100%. I'm curious though about the source. In this case, it doesn't seem to go to a blog but mostly to engadget. It may come up someday that the source of posts needs to be found, i.e, what feed is being submitted TO twitterfeed. Doesn't that make some sense? Maybe a flyover showing the feed URL?
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Yes, but would that give you any more info than clicking on a link does? I can certainly manually provide the source of feeds (yes, in this case an engadet feed), but I'm not sure how much that helps, or how this would make sense to be implemented in the scenario of posting to twitter/laconica. Where would that flyover showing the feed URL be? If somewhere within the post/tweet/dent itself, neither twitter nor identica provide funcitonality like this. Unless I misunderstood?
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Inappropriate?I also agree about the techglance spamming irrelevant posts to TwitArmy. I have no need for this type of behavior! -
Inappropriate?I think the problem is that there's a fundamental difference between large microblogs, like Twitter and Identi.ca, and smaller community microblogs like TWiT Army.
On Twitter people follow folks they're interested in and only see those feeds. They can opt-in to Twitterfeed posts, or ignore them completely.
On TWiT Army, people typically follow everyone via the Public Timeline so they can't "unfollow" feeds they don't like. The use of Twitterfeed on TWiT Army forces people to use the Twitter model and reduces the community feel of the service.
Mario - I think the best solution is not to enable Twitterfeed for TWiT Army. I think you'll find other smaller community sites who respond the same way.
Thanks so much for being to attentive to user needs!1 Comment Add a comment
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As one TWiTizen who seriously enjoys the community feel of the TWiT Army, I'd like to very warmly thank you Leo for your remarks and actions here. Your protection of the community feel of Army is really classy and leaderly. We couldn't have a better skipper at the helm. Thank you!! :-)
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Inappropriate?OK, this should be done now, I'll update the GUI in the near future to make it more obvious, but for now twitterfeed posts to army.twit.tv won't go through.
If you or anyone else continues to see problems related to this, please let me know.1 Comment Add a comment
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Mario, good work, thanks! THe real problem is laconica's youth so the local tools aren't available. Your action fixed the problem and I'm sure everyone but the spammer is happy.
wrt to my comment about source, I meant *who* was posting. Was it Engadget in which case someone there is a ****. It could be anyone posting their feed. That was what I meant by source. Suppose I wanted to tarnish Engadget (or twitterfeed). I could do a lot of damage and the public would never know. Perhaps a recourse (abuse) channel is needed with an inbox for each member on twitterfeed. Too much work, I know but you see the problem I think. -
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