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Twitter Should Shut Me Down

edu.mkrecny.com

201–210 of 219 posts

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#201

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…

He's not a spammer, and the service actually benefits the tweet authors to some degree which cannot be said for spam. Favorite counts are posted publicly, which at least theoretically adds to the user's credibility. Additionally, the accounts doing the favoriting will have some real followers, and those followers will see the favorite and might retweet or favorite it themselves. Given these facts, I'm not sure how ma…

> those followers will see the favorite and might retweet or favorite it themselves

Um, no they won't. Things you favorite don't show up to others unless they specifically go and look at things you have favorited.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De-valuing it for whom, exactly? Given the number of people who are following us back and registering for a service that is extremely relevant/important to them, it's hard to see how there is any degradation of value for anyone involved. In fact, they are gaining value out of it.

That sounds exactly like the rationalization any spammer would make. After all, some people want an online pharmacy, right?

You can say any rationalization would be exactly like the rationalization a spammer would make.

Who's spamming and who is not?

I would argue that the way we're doing this is not spam, as it is clear the people we favorite are getting value by virtue of the fact that they are following us, registering for our service, etc.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#203

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…

Twitter actually has an entire team dedicated to killing spam. Their actually doing a pretty good job for the amount of spam they actually have to deal with. Once they figure out that people have started to use favorites to spam, they'll start killing those kind of spammers too.

Much respect to people fighting spam. It's one of the greatest challenges of the Internet age.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like the rationalization any spammer would make. After all, some people want an online pharmacy, right?

You can say any rationalization would be exactly like the rationalization a spammer would make. Who's spamming and who is not? I would argue that the way we're doing this is not spam, as it is clear the people we favorite are getting value by virtue of the fact that they are following us, registering for our service, etc.

Some serious questions:

What percentage of people who you auto-favorite follow you back and/or register for your service? What threshold do you consider appropriate.

Do you have any visibility into the people who are annoyed by seeing your robot interaction in a place that they feel should be reserved for human interactions?

How would you feel if every single service provider interested in finding you were to favorite all of your tweets to get your attention?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say any rationalization would be exactly like the rationalization a spammer would make. Who's spamming and who is not? I would argue that the way we're doing this is not spam, as it is clear the people we favorite are getting value by virtue of the fact that they are following us, registering for our service, etc.

Some serious questions: What percentage of people who you auto-favorite follow you back and/or register for your service? What threshold do you consider appropriate. Do you have any visibility into the people who are annoyed by seeing your robot interaction in a place that they feel should be reserved for human interactions? How would you feel if every single service provider interested in finding you were to favorit…

I'd like to tweak your final question (with the assumption that this sort of thing could, someday, provide value).

"How would you feel if every single service provider you were interested in finding were to favorite all of your tweets to get your attention."

I'm not suggesting that the technology is there yet, but the future is a big place.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#206
post #68

This is an incredible idea, and it looks like you executed your design well, and even had the gusto to put school aside to go 100%. If anyone deserves to succeed, it's you man. I hope twitter comes around for you.

Really? He just came up with a different way to spam people and you're wishing him well? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I think that part of the problem here is a perspective created by the previous abuses of an activity. That activity is advertising. It isn't inherently bad to attempt to reach out to someone with something they might think is cool. The problem is, historically, the things advertisements show us suck. Because of this, we automatically associate attempts to connect a person with something they might be interested in to be bad if the attempt is initiated by the producer of the good or service.

There are good reasons for this, but it it's still a generalization. Like all generalizations, it isn't always true. It might be the case that this service actually provides value to both parties: the person with the good or service initiating the activity and the person who is made aware of it. This is the definition of a win-win interaction. The only real way to determine the quality of this service is to try to measure whether value is being created on both sides.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#207
Make as much $ from this effort and move on. Who gives a shit about what Twitter does or does not do. It's all just blather and nonsense anyway. If Twitter was shutdown tomorrow - would anyone care - hell no.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some serious questions: What percentage of people who you auto-favorite follow you back and/or register for your service? What threshold do you consider appropriate. Do you have any visibility into the people who are annoyed by seeing your robot interaction in a place that they feel should be reserved for human interactions? How would you feel if every single service provider interested in finding you were to favorit…

I'd like to tweak your final question (with the assumption that this sort of thing could, someday, provide value). "How would you feel if every single service provider you were interested in finding were to favorite all of your tweets to get your attention." I'm not suggesting that the technology is there yet, but the future is a big place.

That premise is entirely backwards.

Anyone I'm interested in finding I'll go searching for. They don't need to inject themselves into my interactions list just because they might trick me into getting my attention.

Do you want to get my attention? Great. There are plenty of well understood and well established ways of doing that. Place an ad in my favorite magazine, sponsor a podcast, create something so great that people can't resist telling me about it. Just don't spam me and pretend you're doing me a favor.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#209
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? He just came up with a different way to spam people and you're wishing him well? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I think that part of the problem here is a perspective created by the previous abuses of an activity. That activity is advertising. It isn't inherently bad to attempt to reach out to someone with something they might think is cool. The problem is, historically, the things advertisements show us suck. Because of this, we automatically associate attempts to connect a person with something they might be interested in to…

I was walking down the street and a guy was waving a sword around with his eyes closed. Before I could react, he thrust the sword deep into my chest. Through some miracle, he avoided every vital organ and, stuck to the end of the sword as it burst through the back of my ribcage, was a huge cancerous tumor. That guy saved my life!

^^^^ this COULD MAYBE happen. I still don't want people to stab me with a sword.

I could MAYBE get spam that has something I want to buy. I still don't want to get spam.

When someone fav's one of my tweets, I get a notification. I like this because it tells me that someone liked something I said. It makes me happy. This reduces the value of these notifications and, if it becomes widespread, will probably make me turn off notifications, which will make me sad. Don't you see how this is producing negative value?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I could imagine a lot of things. I'm just trying to point out that you can't just absolve individuals from being responsible for the outcomes of their decisions. And that's not the same thing as saying "The victim was dumb, they got what they had coming to them".

Bad judgement on one individual doesn't justify bad actions of another individual.

A woman might choose to wear clothes that make her look sexy. But that doesn't justify a guy raping her.

I agree that people act dumb. But that doesn't justify predatory behaviour.

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