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back to article Tenacious Twitter tries to topple terrible trolls

Twitter is tweeting about how much easier it'll be for tweeters to report abusive twits. Stick that in your 140 characters. The microblogging website says it will soon simplify the process of reporting offensive tweets and accounts, and it's promised to respond to allegations of trolling much faster than before. Crucially, …

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  1. Shannon Jacobs
    Holmes

    Better maturity filter?

    How about a better kind of maturity filter? If enabled, any identity younger than your setting would become invisible? My own theory (with moderate support from observations) is that few trolls live longer than a month, and even less for the sock puppets. Long-lived trolls can be blocked, but a maturity setting around 3 months would probably block around 99% of them.

    Hey, I don't want to interfere with their freedom of screech. But they have no right to my having to see their tripe.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Mike Flugennock
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: Better maturity filter?

      Good idea. Actually, the "age" of an account which follows me is one of the criteria I use when deciding to block/report an account for spam. I also take into consideration things like the number of tweets, and how much detailed info is listed under their profile.

      I also consider the number of followers in an account that's just followed me. As a general rule -- there's always exceptions, of course -- if an account's followers number in five digits or higher, I assume it to be a spam/bot, a "celebrity" account obviously run by a bot, or one of those hucksters who's buying/selling fake followers, report it for spam and shit-can it.

      "Quotes" accounts are the goddamn' worst. I tweeted a favorite clip from the Beatles' Ed Sullivan show gig on John Lennon's birthday, and less than an hour later got a bot follow from a "Beatles Quotes" account. OK, I really dig the Beatles, but I don't need a goddamn' Twitter spambot spewing quotes from Beatles songs at me every day, especially as I already own every goddamn' album, and then some.

      Something more evil I've recently heard about -- and I doubt Twitter's doing jack about it -- is some flat-out evil SEO bots actually modifying peoples' tweets and/or inserting images that have nothing to do with the tweet in order to pump up the SEO clients' Google Juice.

      Hell, with that shit going on, the trolling is the least of their problems.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Mike Flugennock
    Meh

    this is all very well, but...

    Hell, I can already deal with the troll accounts -- just block 'em.

    I also already know how to deal with bullshit hashtags like #bringbackourgirls -- mute 'em in Tweetdeck.

    What I want to know is: what are they going to do about all the friggin' mass bot follows? I came up here after spending the day at Thanksgiving dinner to find at least fifteen spambot follows from obvious spam/bot accounts having nothing to do with my interests or desired subject matter -- and for some weird reason, at least half a dozen of them were from tennis players, f'crissake. TENNIS PLAYERS. WT ever-lovin F?

    Perhaps they should also find a way to stop themselves from flinging spam follows at me based on something I just tweeted; this afternoon I tweeted the Reg's report on Stephen Hawking's newly-installed comms system, and about an hour later, I got a bot follow supposedly from that one guy on Big Bang Theory. KNOCK IT OFF, willya?

    I'd also really appreciate them giving me a way to automatically block/mute "sponsored" posts in the Twitter app on my phone, but I know that's expecting too much.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Rob 44
      Reply Icon

      Re: this is all very well, but...

      Never happen. They love spam accounts. It bulks up the user numbers.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: this is all very well, but...

        Yeah. I only hear good things about Twitter from biz/marketing people now - and with a healthy dose of scepticism at that.

        0 0 Reply
    2. Gene Cash Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: this is all very well, but...

      For Android I use the Twitter website as the app is battery-munching garbage. This has the added advantage that the Adblock Edge extension with an EasyList filter subscription kills sponsored posts.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Mike Flugennock
        Reply Icon

        Re: this is all very well, but...

        "For Android I use the Twitter website as the app is battery-munching garbage. This has the added advantage that the Adblock Edge extension with an EasyList filter subscription kills sponsored posts."

        I'm using the Twitter app with IOS 7; it's pretty good on the battery, and it's lean and fast with no useless dross. It lets me shut off auto-displaying of images, which is a treat. I can't block out the sponsored posts, but I report them for spam and block their profiles as soon as I see them, so they only get one shot.

        0 0 Reply

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