{"id":501,"date":"2011-08-01T11:52:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T18:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=501"},"modified":"2011-08-01T15:12:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T22:12:47","slug":"why-is-twitter-spam-so-obnoxious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/01\/why-is-twitter-spam-so-obnoxious\/","title":{"rendered":"why is Twitter spam so obnoxious?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter spam seems to raise our collective hackles more than any other kind of spam. I admit it: I whinge when I get Twitter spam. \u00a0But I observed last week, after engaging in such a whinge, that I’d never dream of doing the same every time I get email spam. \u00a0I’ve even asked here whether a particular behavior was Twitter spam<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Every time I get Twitter spam, I dutifully report it. \u00a0I’m never sure if it does any good, but I do it anyway. \u00a0Last week, Marco Arment commented on Twitter spam and motivation to report it<\/a>, concluding that he’s not going to bother to report it any longer because it just seems like a waste of time. \u00a0I don’t share his assumption that Twitter isn’t doing anything (or isn’t doing enough), so I still report. \u00a0His post is one example of a perception that Twitter spam is a big problem, and that it’s only getting worse.<\/p>\n

I don’t have numbers about Twitter spam, so I’m not sure whether it actually is a big problem, let alone one that’s getting worse. \u00a0The perception of the problem is one that I find fascinating. \u00a0Why is it that Twitter spam bothers us so much? \u00a0My theory2<\/a><\/sup> is that there are several aspects of it that, together, make it bloody obnoxious.<\/p>\n

A lot of Twitter spam is keyword spam. \u00a0There are some keywords that are guaranteed to get you spam responses: iPad, iPhone, laptop, etc. \u00a0It’s really galling to know that I’m going to tweet something and be entirely (and often accurately) convinced that I’m going to get spammed in response. \u00a0Compare this to email spam: there’s no obvious link between my action and the spam. \u00a0The spam that I get in email has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever done, it’s just an indiscriminate firehose. \u00a0I’ve been getting a bunch of Viagra spam on my blog post about appearing on the Angry Mac Bastard podcast<\/a>, but while I find that amusing, it’s probably coincidence.<\/p>\n

Twitter spam is addressed directly to me, and mentions\/replies to @nadyne<\/a> are designed to get my attention. \u00a0They’re supposed to be so important that they get their own stream, and I never skip reading @nadyne references. \u00a0I’ve seen people get testy when there’s some kind of contest or promotion that asks people to tweet something, but that’s rare, and I haven’t observed the same level of vitriol about that behavior as I have for the usual Twitter spam. \u00a0Email spam, while it might be addressed directly to me, isn’t highlighted in the same way, it’s just part of my inbox.<\/p>\n

I can’t really scan past Twitter spam because it’s identical to everything else. \u00a0When I read my email, I scan my inbox to see what I can immediately delete. \u00a0Email spam is often, although not always, obvious enough that I can just read the sender\/subject and delete it without wasting any more attention on it. \u00a0On the other hand, Twitter spam is roughly identical to the rest of Twitter. \u00a0While I’m probably not devoting any more time to reading Twitter spam than I am reading the subject line of email spam, I don’t feel as annoyed by email spam because the time spent on the subject of the email is much less than the time that I’d spend actually reading the email.<\/p>\n

Are there other aspects of Twitter spam that make it feel so much more obnoxious than other forms of spam?<\/p>\n

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  1. And, for the record, the overwhelming agreement was that it was spam. Most of the responses came in via Twitter, which isn’t surprising. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. As a researcher, I must point out that I have no data whatsoever to back up this theory. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Twitter spam seems to raise our collective hackles more than any other kind of spam. I admit it: I whinge when I get Twitter spam. \u00a0But I observed last week, after engaging in such a whinge, that I’d never dream of doing the same every time I get email spam. \u00a0I’ve even asked here whether … Continue reading why is Twitter spam so obnoxious?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadyne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}