TwitBlock is over a year old now. One thing we have tried to avoid is being an authority on what is and isn’t spam. We have deliberately avoided blacklisting accounts. The idea has always been to empower the community to collectively decide what is spam by bringing the most likely junk accounts to the surface. We provide some very simple analysis, and indicate how many other people also think an account is spam.
A blacklist is now in effect
For reasons that I’ll explain below, we have decided to implement a blacklist system as of today. Blacklisted Twitter accounts always show up with a 100% confidence score and will appear at the top of scan results. You can still see the standard spam score indicators, as the screen-grab below shows.
Read more…
One of the most common things people say to me when I tell them about TwitBlock is along the lines of “I’m not bothered by spam on Twitter” – “I just ignore it” – “Why should I care if a spam account is following me?“.
Read more…
Last week a another change to Twitter caused me problems with my personal project TwitBlock. For the impatient, see my Google groups post about it. (It didn’t go down very well).
If you’re a Twitter user, you’re probably familiar with this image:
It is/was the default profile image for users that have not uploaded a custom avatar. You may also have noticed last week that Twitter has introduced a new version. Actually they they made seven of them in different colours:
At least I think they made seven; I can’t find any more, but I can’t find any official document stating how many are out there either.
Read more…
I made a major change to TwitBlock the other night. The change was made to protect people who are heavily blocked, but are not “spam”. Of course that depends on your definition. (A topic for another day)
Originally each block on account would yield 10 points. Then I became aware of just how murky this issue is. Barack Obama is blocked by many accounts (Republicans no doubt) plus some people with extreme right wing views were being blocked heavily. Then the complaints started. People whose businesses survive on a huge Twitter following accused me of destroying their reputations, and generating further blocks on their account by showing the number of existing blocks.
So now two things have changed for the time being:
1. Clicks on “not spam” are deducted from blocks;
2. Blocks are diluted by the size of a user’s following. 10 points are added for every 1%. So, if you’re blocked by 40 people, but are followed by 8,000 this will only yield 5 points.
Although this has stemmed the complaints, the scanner is less aggressive and lots of real spam accounts are not showing up with high enough scores. I am struggling to find the balance in the face of all of this and may have to tweak it again.
I just received an email that I thought would be of interest to everyone. I have removed people’s names for reasons of privacy, but I have left the spelling mistakes in for a sense of realism. My open reply to the author follows at the bottom. Read more…