In 2012, changes made to Twitter’s spam account identification algorithm have been catching and suspending some new Twitter spam accounts more rapidly—sometimes much more rapidly—than in 2011.
More users than ever before are reporting that as fast as they can check new accounts that appear to be spam they have already been suspended. This sometimes creates confusion, as Twitter does not always report “Account Suspended” but sometimes “Account Does Not Exist,” leading to the question “If they don’t exist, how did they follow and tweet me?”
Despite the occasional confusion, this is a great achievement, as Twitter is working to put in a place a system that stops spam in realtime as it happens. Eventually, Twitter’s goal is to predict spam before it happens.
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I have been trying to report this site which sells tools for spamming twitter… but keep getting form letters back – HEY TWITTER, CLOSE DOWN THIS GUY!!!! http://www.blackhattoolz.com/tweetertraffic.php
While there are some laws relating to email spam, there are no laws that I know of (yet) relating to Twitter spam. So it is not illegal, and therefore there is no legal basis for shutting them down.
In other words, whoever hosts the site can’t take it down without violating the legal rights of whoever put the site up. The laws haven’t caught up yet
Also, even when there are such laws, selling tools to spam is not the same as spamming. So there would also have to be laws against selling tools that could be used to create Twitter spam, in addition to laws against the spamming itself.
While anti-spam laws will probably be extended to Twitter, it’s unlikely that there will laws passed against selling the software. Lawyers will often make an argument such as “it’s not illegal to own a car, but some people use cars for illegal purposes. So you can’t ban selling cars just because some people do bad things with them.”
The software makers would simply make their software usable for different things, with a hidden purpose that they could be used for spamming. That way they could protect themselves and keep selling their spam software
It’s so satisfying when I get an email from a new follower and when I go to their Twitter profile, their account is already terminated. Thanks Twitter.
…in my experience, they still leave A LOT to be desired in this regard. This, for example, has been going on for MONTHS –> https://twitter.com/#!/karmmie34
And there’s currently ongoing campaign by spam-bots posting a repeating set of abusive messages that have been at it for weeks with no action.
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