Twitter is not the first online entity to be plagued by porn spammers, as it is an unfortunate and unavoidable part of the internet. As soon as a social site becomes somewhat popular, adult outlets will try to exploit it.
I’m sure many of you had some questionable followers as soon as you joined twitter. The problem has been well reported all over the internet. At least in this case you can block the followers and/or report them (even though it is a pain that Twitter should still address themselves).
However, what you cannot seem to do at this time is to avoid these porn spammers when searching Twitter for completely non-porn related words, or setting up a feed using the Twitter search on your website.
We at 10e20 have the Twitter Feed right on the sidebar ->. All it does is pull the recent tweets from a search for 10e20, which lets you, the reader, quickly see what people are saying about us.
Well, a few days ago, unfortunately that sidebar has been filled with tweets from 4 or 5 porn accounts in a row, because they tweeted about 10e20.
After checking some of those accounts, you can see that they intertwine their tweets between links to their porn sites and tweeting legitimate news and trendy topics. This way their accounts will show up for legitimate searches, and as we found out, in your Twitter feed as well.
Currently, there is no pro-active way for us to battle this. All we can do is write a script to black list those accounts from showing up in our feed after the fact. But I was definitely surprised to find out that Twitter does not have anything in place on their end.
It’s time for Twitter to get on board and introduce an adult filter that’s turned on by default, but can be turned off if a user wishes so (much so like Google applies onto their search).
It would then be up to community to report questionable accounts as ‘adult’ or ‘spam’ (various labels can be introduced) and up to admins to label them as such – so that they don’t show up in the legitimate searches.
A good example of this in action is when you search for Obama on Google. You can be sure that there probably won’t be any porn, even if Google did not have an adult filter, simply because there are many more legit websites about Obama out there. Twitter, however, doesn’t work that way. If you tweet about Obama, you will show up on the search no matter what your account says. So an adult filter seems to be a must in such a scenario.
Furthermore, labeling accounts as adult can open an additional option for users to choose if they want to be followed by an ‘adult’ account or not. So essentially all Twitter activity can be filtered if the individual user wants. Of course, if you don’t mind receiving adult content then you should have an option to turn the filter off.
What do you think? Is it time for an adult filter and why do you think nothing currently exists?
Pardon a slightly off-topic comment, but I find it hilarious how Darren's (@edmontonseo) smiling face is at the bottom of all the porn
Looks like he got caught up in some shrapnel Pete!
I thought the same thing! And he's so smiley about it too.
Oh snap! Yeah, I call for an adult filter too. This is making me look bad!
Sorry Darren
Just wanted to illustrate that the spammy comments are right next to legit ones; but we can take you out if you want.
Thanks, but nah. I'm too legit to quit.
While it's easy enough to block porn spammers, I still hate having the avatars virtually forced upon me. I think it needs to be blocked from the back end and shouldn't take community policing, which obviously doesn't work – especially if your kid decides to get a twitter account. I'm aware of several back-end image filters that Twitter could easily employ as a creative solution (http://www.SurfRecon.com, others). Do you really think spammers are going to sign up under an adult account, and thus limit their audience?
I'm all for them using whatever means are necessary – whether it's image recognition software or using their community to report adult material, or writing their own scripts. Whatever works. It just seems weird that they are so behind on filtering this out. I think that spammers really destroyed myspace to the point where people have left their accounts. Hopefully twitter does not repeat the same mistake.
I have gotten some followers with crudely graphic avatars in the past and have wondered the same thing. I hope they do something about it as well!
I agree with Scott Cowley, there needs to be something there for those with children who don't even want to see the avatars. I start to feel icky if I think I can only Twitter at night.
– Jeffery
The last half of the post really shows the limits of real time search. Scott Cowley makes a good point too, spammers aren't going to limit themselves, they need to be in front of as many people as possible and signing up as an adult tweeter does not work. Sure limits would be great, but what makes twitter so great is there are no limits, and I think most people understand that.
I think that if you give the power to report abuse to the people, the community would get rid of the spammers. Perhaps it's not perfect, but the fact that currently there's nothing in place is a head-scratcher.
Well i know of a good way to keep spammers from following you…. Set up a account over at http://topify.com
What they do is replace the crappy twitter email you get for follower requests with their own email which gives you 1 click links to block & spam new followers.
Topifys email also provides you with other relevant info about the new follower.
That should help remove some spam in the twitterverse but not all of it.
User-created solutions like this could be definitely somewhat helpful. I’m just not sure why twitter is so behind on things.
This one doesn’t really address the search spam problem, which is probably an even bigger issue than the followers.
I beleave there is a tool for things you reinvented the wheel..
http://www.tidytweet.com/
There is a twitter tool almost for everything.
BTW here is the list of other tools
http://blog.thoughtpick.com/2009/07/how-to-5-top-methods-applications-to-reduce-twitter-spam.html
RIGHT ON! It is so annoying to get 20 new followers overnight, only to find that 1/2 of them are porn tweeters. I am pleased to see that often by the time I get back to personally checking them out (because sometimes you can't tell by their avatar) that many of them have already had their page taken down. Of course all that does is cause them to set up another e-mail account and start all over again.
I realize that Twitter is overwhelmed, running on a shoestring, and busy not making any money, but this problem definitely needs to get bumped up in their priority list.
Thanks to the others who commented with their suggestions. I am going to try some of those to see if it helps.
Sincerely,
@CreativeSales
@CreativeSales Topify.com is exactly what you need for your situation.
I forgot to mention one more thing Topify is FREE!
It does get to be a pain in the rear to deal with all the porn on Twitter. A good friend of mine experienced something similar where he had porn sites RTing his legit links. Oh well… if there is a loophole, it will be exploited by someone.
I like your idea about the filter – and I think that filter is needed not only on Twitter!
u need to have a look @ thissuch a hottie.
just a bit help and a click i get 1 more