In light of a recent wave of robot-like accounts popping up on its microblogging platform, Twitter has been aggressively ramping up its fight against spam. On August 21, they announced they had implemented a new tool that would allow them to review and suspend accounts more easily. Twitter also stated that they have hired dedicated staff to aid in this fight.

Twitter’s investment and efforts are showing progress. Just today a spam account started following me and in less than six hours (and probably quicker) this account has been suspended. With every suspension an annoyance has been temporarily stopped, saving individuals from having to block the account themselves. However, this method for suspending accounts only works after the spammer has had some impact on the community. What I find missing in this fight is what the community can be doing to protect themselves from these spam accounts from the start.

In the spam account I listed above, it attracted 40 followers out of the 1,881 accounts it followed. For whatever reason, people bit (or had auto-follow enabled -Mike) and in doing so validated the spamming tweep. Twitter, like all microblogs I am aware of, uses an opt-in model for accepting posts into your profile stream and in this model the spammer cannot spam your account unless you follow it. Given this situation, if the community was more proactive in selecting who they followed, would Twitter need to develop custom tools and hire staff to fight spam? Or could the community kill it without their help?

I believe we can play an active role in fighting spam and reducing its threat. Look for our post series, Fighting Microblog Spam, in the near future.