Take me to your leader...for low prices and scams! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Anyone who’s talked with me on Twitter and read my blog knows that one of my greatest pet peeves on the network are Spambots. They are incredibly annoying. Why? Because they pollute Twitter’s stream of content, and makes for a really sore disappointment when that new follower you got just says “Check out this #Awesome #Deal for #Nothing At Spamsite.com” Because as we all know, making every other word a hashtag is something any social media “guru” would recommend (Those not getting the sarcasm: DON’T DO THAT.)
But lately, they’ve been out in full force! In particular, they seem to be promoting Walmart more than anything. Normally I’m able to minimize my “experiences” with spambots by not mentioning popular words like iPhone or Android, or using Good ‘Ol Leet Speak when I have to: 1Ph0n3 is teh 1337, right? But even that isn’t stopping them now! It’s like they’ve latched on to people and blast them with Walmart spiel nonstop! THEY DON’T EVEN MAKE SENSE! Here’s one such tweet:
I do not know. Susan eats fox porridge flying high Potato spewing carrots save money bimbo @WalmartDiscounts
I know that the basic premise of spam is that you fire off potentially millions of emails so 1% can respond to it, but that’s going a bit far. Who’s going to click on a link from THAT? Or the ones that just have random links and a reply? I can’t think of anyone who uses Twitter that would be that stupid…but I guess there are people out there, huh? Otherwise it wouldn’t be so profitable.
Honestly, I don’t really see much of a solution to it either. My recommendation would be to not allow Tweeters to talk with others until they Tweet a few lines of coherent non-plagiarized content. But even that has its issues.
Until a solution is found, do your #dailytwitterservice and report and block spammers. If everyone got rid of one bot a day, Twitter would be a cleaner place, and it’ll make you feel better too.
Honestly, I think we can make a solution that will benefit everyone. I don’t normally ask for comments (Well, in an explicit way,) but I think we all can find an idea that would get rid of spambots or at least cripple them. If World Of Warcraft can make Gold Farming hell, we can make life suck for spammers on our Twitter.
So, what should we do?
