There are massive bot farms on Twitter that are obvious to even casual observers and most of them don't have "egg" accounts anymore. Look at the auto-replies to any political tweet, major news story, or from a popular account, all automated garbage that follows the same template.<p>Why Twitter ignores the crap which pollutes their product is amazing to me. Maybe they don't want to touch them because it ups the engagement numbers and inflates active users?
Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messaging celebs who don't follow them back
So because I see no reason to upload a photo my 7 year old twitter account is now considered second rate whereas the bot account created last week is not because it was updated to upload a random profile image.<p>Seems a bit like trying to claim they are doing something while nothing important gets done.
Today, the egg, tomorrow, unverified account names. Are they going full Facebook?<p>And filtering out keywords in messages... I suppose that's ok, and certainly their prerogative, but talk about creating more social bubbles. As much as I disagree with the random twits on the site, it reminds me that not everyone is a left-leaning political hobbyist. Hearing things you don't necessarily like is part of being an adult.
Just got this today:<p>Good day there! How are you today? I am a girl who just moved to live in this city! I have done a search on Twitter to look for man in our area and yeah I found your Twitter. In case you don't mind we can make friend and chat chit! Do you have snapchat? Please add me on Snapchat nick: [redacted] so we will chat and I can show you my personal photos! I don't like to chitchat here:) It's boring! Lets Snapchat! Sometimes I also use another Snapchat nick: [redacted] on another cellphone, kindly add this nick too if you did not see me online on Snapchat nick: [redacted] :) Hope to chat with you really soon.
No mention of how filtering might apply to Twitter's trending algorithms. Since much of the activities of bots are aimed at pushing a narrative to a wider audience (getting it trending), it seems like Twitter is currently neglecting one of the most serious harms that bots pose to the community.<p>I get that Twitter is focusing on harassment in order to make people feel safe when using their platform, but I hope the solution will also effect this other aspect of bot use/account abuse.
I see Twitter is getting harder and harder to use anonymously. As someone living under a totalitarian government that is tightening its grip everyday on free speech and the internet in general, this worries me.<p>Trying to signup and use Twitter using Tor is practically impossible.<p>I understand the spam problem on Twitter is out of control,but I wish there was a way to use it anonymously.
What I don't understand: Why doesn't twitter take moderation seriously? On reddit it's left up to the moderators of each sub. It does very. But having a very "up to interpretation" but yet not politically biased set of rules and enforcement is great.<p>We don't have a code of conduct or any of the nonsense. Someone violates it and we catch it, they're gone. (Also that's subjective to time based on how many times we caught them as well) End of.
Dammit. I thought I could now remove any tweet that had the word 'trump' in it[^2], which meant I could refollow a bunch of people and make twitter much more useful, but it seems that it only works for notifications in which you are mentioned[1], which means the feature is pretty pointless, at least for most people.<p>[1]:<a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175032" rel="nofollow">https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175032</a>
[^2]: this is a complaint I have with almost any social media, even google plus. I want a persons insight on subject x, I don't want to hear their political ramblings, no matter what side they are on - politics are poison.
Faster please. Anything that accelerates Twitter's demise is ok in my books. Bonus points if wounds are self-inflicted.<p>I'm old enough to remember when you only had to deal with the crazies holding signs and hollering if you went to certain parts of town. If you didn't go and/or engage the crazies they didn't really exist. Sort of like if a tree falls but nobody is there...<p>Now everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and spouts nonsense all over Twitter. Time to take away the soapbox.