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As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

washingtonpost.com

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Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#21

Post by greglindahl »

meowface wrote: post #5
matthewbauer wrote: post #2

Why can't Twitter block this? It's really not much different than email spam. Twitter could pretty easily find duplicate posts and remove them. More and more, I wonder why Twitter is so popular. I never really "got it". If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator. If I want memes, I can go to Reddit/Tumblr. If I want to talk to friends, I can use Facebook. Twitter always just gives me a headache.

Why should this be banned? It's not the same as spam, since you have to subscribe to someone to see their tweets.

These tweets leak into search results. Or, maybe you want to think of it as "Twitter allows them to leak into search results."

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#22

Post by jsprogrammer »

greglindahl wrote: post #21
meowface wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should this be banned? It's not the same as spam, since you have to subscribe to someone to see their tweets.

These tweets leak into search results. Or, maybe you want to think of it as "Twitter allows them to leak into search results."

Twitter manipulates search results. I've been looking at a live tweet, searched for a hashtag in that tweet, and Twitter said there were no matching Tweets.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#23

Post by snowwrestler »

meowface wrote: post #5
matthewbauer wrote: post #2

Why can't Twitter block this? It's really not much different than email spam. Twitter could pretty easily find duplicate posts and remove them. More and more, I wonder why Twitter is so popular. I never really "got it". If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator. If I want memes, I can go to Reddit/Tumblr. If I want to talk to friends, I can use Facebook. Twitter always just gives me a headache.

Why should this be banned? It's not the same as spam, since you have to subscribe to someone to see their tweets.

Not if they @ you, which is what these bots do--which also triggers a notification if you have them turned on.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#24

Post by manishsharan »

cperciva wrote: post #19
manishsharan wrote: post #7

To each his own ! I brutally prune the list of people I follow ; if I feel someone is spamming or retweeting garbage, I get rid of them. However, some people may not be so unforgiving and that is ok : they are probably the ones clicking on links in sponsored tweets.

Most of this guy's followers are probably bots and other spammers. The problem arises if/when this noise is weighted equally with humans when it comes to deciding what is "trending".

You raise an important point I had not considered. Bots could skew trending metrics to favor spammers. That could get them more media coverage which could lead to influencers trying to get in on the coverage by re-tweeting spam. And the spammer succeeds.

Unlike Google which mercilessly penalizes content farms, Twitter probably does not have the intellectual wherewithal to combat spammers.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#25

Post by r721 »

meowface wrote: post #17
somedangedname wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a Twitter user but: if you wanted to disrupt or derail ongoing conversations, couldn't that be done programmatically too? Or harass people?

Yes, but that's a different subject entirely. This article is just describing someone queueing up general political tweets.

>and “.@realDonaldTrump” in hopes of getting the attention of Trump or those who track messages to him.

He mentions Trump by username in some tweets at least, so that could be considered "harassing" (depending on scale though).

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#26

Post by refurb »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #15
matthewbauer wrote: post #2

Why can't Twitter block this? It's really not much different than email spam. Twitter could pretty easily find duplicate posts and remove them. More and more, I wonder why Twitter is so popular. I never really "got it". If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator. If I want memes, I can go to Reddit/Tumblr. If I want to talk to friends, I can use Facebook. Twitter always just gives me a headache.

"If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator" The one time I found twitter to be far superior is when I heard gunshots outside my apartment and found the location and a pretty good understanding of what happened within a few minutes.

As someone who barely uses Twitter, how did you find the information? I'm sure there is good info out there, but it's impossible to find unless you've already subscribed to follow people.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#27

Post by iambateman »

refurb wrote: post #26
jasonkostempski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator" The one time I found twitter to be far superior is when I heard gunshots outside my apartment and found the location and a pretty good understanding of what happened within a few minutes.

As someone who barely uses Twitter, how did you find the information? I'm sure there is good info out there, but it's impossible to find unless you've already subscribed to follow people.

My community Facebook group does a fantastic job at answering the regular "gunshots vs. fireworks" debate.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#28

Post by iambateman »

Twitter used to be amazing. I found real friends who shared common affinities and got freelance work on a regular basis.

But now, twitter is full of political nonsense and bots. I had an "ultramarathoner" tweet "lier" at me the other day.

Honestly, HN is the closest thing to early-twitter that I know about for chatting about interesting stories.

Re: As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work

#30

Post by mistersquid »

refurb wrote: post #26
jasonkostempski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I want news, I can go to a news website/aggregator" The one time I found twitter to be far superior is when I heard gunshots outside my apartment and found the location and a pretty good understanding of what happened within a few minutes.

As someone who barely uses Twitter, how did you find the information? I'm sure there is good info out there, but it's impossible to find unless you've already subscribed to follow people.

Twitter apps on mobile devices can surface near-to-you Tweets. This is incredibly helpful in emergency situations.

A couple years back there were, literally, a dozen police cars on my street and traffic blocked in all directions. I discovered on Twitter searching Tweets near to me that a man had barricaded himself in an apartment around the corner. He had a hostage and when he started lighting the apartment on fire, the SF SWAT team killed him. [0]

More info on event from The SFist. [1]

[0] https://twitter.com/galactic/status/200451986838138880

[1] http://sfist.com/2012/05/09/homicide_suspect_has_standoff_wi...

EDIT: Link layout. Spelling. Reduce number of single-sentence paragraphs. Reword fourth sentence.

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