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Twitter Should Shut Me Down

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Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#141

Post by vshade »

moskie wrote: post #126
scrabble wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. These are people who are following accounts because the accounts favorite a tweet of theirs. If you follow someone without looking into their profile and deciding if you are interested in their content then you get what you deserve.

"because the accounts favorite a tweet of theirs." I think this is incorrect. The intended purpose of "Favorites" is to communicate that a living, breathing person (as opposed to an "account," as you describe) saw my tweet, enjoyed it, and liked it enough to Favorite it. The OP's product fraudulently claims to Twitter users that the customers of this product are engaging in that action.

I use the favorites to mark something to read later, it means that I'm interested in some link that was posted but I wasn't in conditions to read at that time. The OP service is spammy but no one told me that the favorites should only be used in the way you describe.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#142

Post by adventured »

tomkarlo wrote: post #129
pdeuchler wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or ads on GMail? Seems like with that definition you can define any sort of advertisement on a communication medium "spam". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic) Note: "indiscriminately" I wasn't aware of the emails, I haven't received one and I've been favorited before.

No, not "or ads on Gmail". Gmail doesn't create ads that pretend to be email messages. The whole point here is that it's a mis-use of a messaging channel - they are leveraging the fact that users _don't_ expect favoriting to be a form of advertising, they expect it to be a message from an actual human being that has favorited their post because they like it. (Similar to the problems with follower spam.) (I'd also poi…

Two small points. First, you can't define anything as anything, stick with your gut on that one. If you could, the word define could have no definition, and the entire concept of definitions would be invalid. Someone getting sloppy with their definitions doesn't change the generally agreed upon meaning of concepts. I can call a rock a bird, but that doesn't actually make it so. There's a pretty reasonable definition of spam at this point.

Second, the advertising on Gmail (or Yahoo mail etc) isn't an indirect benefit, it's an exceptionally direct benefit. I've gotten to use a truly great, fast, reliable email service - Gmail - for a decade, with gigabytes of storage, and all they've done is run ads on the right side that I've never once clicked on and they never get in my way. Talk about a helluva deal. You're completely correct in the fact that Gmail ads are nothing like spam.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#144

Post by moskie »

vshade wrote: post #141
moskie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because the accounts favorite a tweet of theirs." I think this is incorrect. The intended purpose of "Favorites" is to communicate that a living, breathing person (as opposed to an "account," as you describe) saw my tweet, enjoyed it, and liked it enough to Favorite it. The OP's product fraudulently claims to Twitter users that the customers of this product are engaging in that action.

I use the favorites to mark something to read later, it means that I'm interested in some link that was posted but I wasn't in conditions to read at that time. The OP service is spammy but no one told me that the favorites should only be used in the way you describe.

The scenario you described sounds like exactly what I said, with different words. You, a living, breathing person, saw the tweet, enjoyed it to the point where you said you want to check it out later, enough such that you decided to favorite it.

edit: The main point being that the intended purpose is to communicate that an actual person actively read the tweet, and for whatever their reasons, actively decided to favorite the tweet.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#145

Post by TylerE »

saalweachter wrote: post #139
TylerE wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's Amazon's core business. It's not Twitter's core business.

Charging people money for goods and services is everyone's core business.

No, it's not actually. You could maybe make the argument that it should be, but it isn't.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#146

Post by patmcguire »

unreal37 wrote: post #67

This business model isn't analogous to "promoted tweets" or "Twitter ads". It's analogous to "email spam". You're a spammer essentially. Using an automated bot to fake a human interaction (favorite) in order to get my attention and get me to follow you. It doesn't matter that it's more effective than "Twitter Ads". Twitter Ads are marked as Ads, your favorites are not. I really do hope Twitter shuts you down, as well…

If they algorithmically narrowed it down to a list of tweets that the brand should favorite, and someone on the other end picked one, is that spam? What if they narrow it down to one, and the human just clicks every single suggestion? How much human do you have to cut out for it to be spam?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#147

Post by __derek__ »

maxbrown wrote: post #120
MartinCron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I've innovated on the Ads UX What you've done is move ads from the place where they're supposed to be (promoted tweets) to the place where they're not supposed to be (your interactions). Innovative spam is still spam.

I'll play devil's advocate to this one... you're saying "interactions" are places where ads aren't supposed to be? Isn't any interaction between a business and individuals on Twitter really marketing?

That's a non-sequitur: marketing and advertising are not the same thing.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#148

Post by wpietri »

mindcrime wrote: post #101
wpietri wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the "if the victim is that dumb, they deserve it" school of thought. Note that you can substitute all sorts of adjectives for "dumb". E.g., "those nerds are so unpopular they deserve to get beaten up". Or, "those people are poor enough that they deserve to live next to a toxic waste dump". Basically, it's a way of taking whatever characteristic you pride yourself on and then making yourself feel even better about…

Ah, the "if the victim is that dumb, they deserve it" school of thought. No, the "take responsibility for the outcome of your own actions" school of thought. Or do you think one should be able to wander through life, doing and saying anything one pleases, completely oblivious to your environment, and not expect bad things to happen sometimes?

If the only thing you could imagine someone meaning is something obviously idiotic, you probably aren't imagining hard enough.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#149

Post by tomkarlo »

adventured wrote: post #142
tomkarlo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not "or ads on Gmail". Gmail doesn't create ads that pretend to be email messages. The whole point here is that it's a mis-use of a messaging channel - they are leveraging the fact that users _don't_ expect favoriting to be a form of advertising, they expect it to be a message from an actual human being that has favorited their post because they like it. (Similar to the problems with follower spam.) (I'd also poi…

Two small points. First, you can't define anything as anything, stick with your gut on that one. If you could, the word define could have no definition, and the entire concept of definitions would be invalid. Someone getting sloppy with their definitions doesn't change the generally agreed upon meaning of concepts. I can call a rock a bird, but that doesn't actually make it so. There's a pretty reasonable definition…

I misspoke. The slop was in the interpretation of the definition, not the definition itself.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#150

Post by tanepiper »

There is another company that does this - I forget it's name, but they didn't explain what they did - just that they had a model to 'find quality followers'

Quickly I got sick of the number of favourites it did - it was really spammy. I am not a fan of this model.

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