Dear Twitter:
There’s not much I don’t love about Twitter. Since another writer convinced me to join last December, I’ve used it almost every day to find sources, do research, track events, report the news and kibbutz with friends.
But over the months, the amount of spam that’s showing up on the network has risen along with the number of new users. And more of that spam is X-rated
Yesterday was a new low. I clicked on the profile of someone who’d just started following me and saw the most graphic pornography I’ve ever encountered on Twitter, a photograph the spammer put up as their profile photo. It was a shock to say the least. And it could have been worse – my eight-year-old was in my office at the time. Good thing he was preoccupied with the TV.
I get that some people go online for porn. I also get that Twitter doesn’t want people to jump through a lot of security hoops to join, all the better for millions more to sign up.
But nobody should have to worry about what they’ll find when they open an email from Twitter notifying them of a new follower, or when they click on their Followers list.
So I’m asking, on my behalf, and for all of the other Twitter users out there who don’t want to be afraid of their inbox – stop the porn spam. Giving people a Twitter account to report spam is a start. Letting people block followers they don’t want to in their Followers list or to see tweets from is also good.
But it’s not enough. Figure out some kind of pre-screening mechanism. Maybe some of the Twitter apps that are out there can already screen for this stuff. For the time being, I’ve turned off email notification so I won’t get messages about new followers, just in case.
I’ve done my share of evangelizing Twitter to coworkers, family and friends. But this is giving me second thoughts. My daughter’s on Twitter – what if she’d gotten that porn spam instead of me?
Come on Twitter, help us out.
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Michelle: I agree that porn shouldn’t be bandied about on Twitter, but somehow I’ve managed to avoid it. Maybe it’s because I only click on someone’s profile if they seem legit (you can do this by looking at your list of followers and approving them through that). I also don’t read my new follower emails, because I’d never get any work done if I did! But I do try to approve followers every few days.
What I find frustrating is that Twitter suspended the accounts of thousands of users (including me) on Sunday and there’s very little you can do if you’re being investigated for spam. You’re basically at their mercy! It turned out to be a mistake, but I was pretty peeved at the suggestion that I might be a spammer and the fact that there was very little explanation about why they suspected this. That’s a pretty scatching accusation!
It’s ironic, really, that people with legit accounts got suspended for suspected spam and Twitter doesn’t do much to prevent porn.
That’s so lame that people have such a high sex drive that they have to post it on twitter becuase they can’t keep it in their minds. ugh. Anyway, I have had that happen to me too on VOIS.com which is a site for freelancers to look for projects. We have had to disable a few accounts because it was just too much.
I was told that usernames like mine on Twitter appears to others as a Pornographic name, lol, when in fact I use Twitter to spread, market, and be a goof ball! Jesseeka4510 if you don’t believe me. This is a great article by the way- I mean Blog. = P
It has truly become rampant, Michelle, and I am in full agreement with you. I accidentally clicked on one of them once and they haven’t let up yet even though I have since blocked the first one. Now, I just let them follow me. If someone does not have something that I can recognize in their bio, I am extra cautious in the possibility of opening them. Most of the time, these porn bots have something in their profile that alerts me to their nature. If there’s any doubt, I leave them alone and they can follow me. I’m afraid that taking any action at this point alerts other spammers that I’m paying attention to them and I don’t want that, so I leave them alone. But I will not follow them back. Seems like no matter the forum, there will always be some kind of bot or hacker or advertiser that doesn’t care about what others are trying to do. I’m glad that Twitter is making an effort towards wedding out these spammers, but they definitely need a better method for it. Thank you for ranting about this!
In one way, it’s proof that Twitter has made its mark on society—the presence of porn proves its permanence.
But, I have to agree, I’ve grown awfully tired of the spam twits, especially the bizarre porn spam twits. Twitter often pulls the plug on these accounts but their avatars still remain on your little iconic proof sheet of followers, just sitting there all smug and mostly naked, making you look like a pervert.
As more kiddos get active on Twitter (there’s no age restriction, right?) the company will need to find ways to create parental controls—lest your eight year old click on that link himself.
I agree Michelle that lately Twitter has gone way downhill. Several months ago I went on a big ‘following’ kick, and proactively sought out folks to follow on subjects of interest to me. I easily was following 200 or more folks than were following me. And in the last 2 months or so I have been followed by so many porn, MLM, and scammers (that I never follow back), that I am now about even in following/follower ratio. Basically in 2 months I have picked up about 200 worthless followers. It is a bit sad.
Michelle, I had the same experience that you did. My daughter is 9 years old and is a gymnast. When we saw Shawn Johnson on Dancing with the Stars talking about her twitter account I allowed my daughter to go on twitter and sign up so she could follow Shawn Johnson, who is her idol. Even though Twitter says you must be 13 to use the sight I let her sign up with the understanding that I would supervise. A couple of weeks ago she got an email she wanted me to see. It was from Twitter telling her that LuluBarrett was now following her and showed the pornographic icon that was her picture. What makes me so made is that we put my daughter picture on her id so it was obvious that this was a CHILD that was using the sight and this nasty person still picked her out to follow her and she was sent this pornographic email from her. I immediately cancelled her twitter account because of this filthy fool that followed her. Its a shame that a few ridiculous idiots can ruin something good.
I think you are probably right about the spam-bot randomly picking her out to follow but the age restriction being 13 doesn’t make me feel any better. I wouldn’t want my 13 year old seeing pornography either. If it is going to allow obscene material on the sight it needs to be an 18 and only website and require verification of age. My opinion is Twitter started the website, makes money off the site and it is their responsibility to keep it safe and clean.
It is October 09 and on it goes. Seems like every now and then I comment on a picture or a video and a few minutes suddenly I have a half dozen new ‘friends’…and have to go about blocking them. So seems the first antivirus co. that can come up with a twitter filter “will” make some money (come on Norton). Anyway glad others are speaking out.
Jim
I wasn’t getting as much Twitter porn spam for a while there, then over the weekend while I was at a conference and adding a lot of new followers and vice versa I started getting a bunch of it again. Must be proportional to the number of followers you’re adding.
MvR
[...] It really hasn’t become a big issue for me personally (though it has for others). In fact, I was so amused by the event that I literally “laughed out loud”. However, the idea of this being a bigger and potentially more widespread problem on Twitter is kind of unnerving. Just ask Michelle V. Rafter. [...]
I am “sick” of it! It happens at least 2 times a week, having to “report as spam or block” is obviously not doing the job, and Twitter is not working hard enough to prevent such a nuisance. Especially when you own your own business!! How professional is that.. You have followers follow you and some want to check out who we are following or who is following us and then then they get a BIG surprise by it being “porn!”
Legit or not, we shouldn’t have to worry about clicking on a new follower & it be porn!!! Business’s want to run their business not support porn sites!!!!
Get it together Twitter, unless its just another Myspace….
Thanks for the comment. Keep making those kinds of comments to Twitter too. A year ago the company didn’t even have a “Report as spam” button, just an @reply that you had to report a porn spammer to. They’ve come along way since then, but I agree that there’s more that could be done.
Michelle
I am new on Twitter. In the past I refrained for privacy reasons. Are women targeted more than men? The avatar is often a woman then the link is the same site. Does the site have some capability to capture your IP or what is the financial purpose?
I will continue to enjoy the creative influence that microblogging brings despite the rain.
To the best of my knowledge Twitter spammers are equal opportunity abusers, they don’t target one gender over another.
I don’t know what you mean by “capture your IP address.”
If you’re asking what financial motivation Twitter spammers have, it’s the same any any other spammers: do get you to do something that profits them, either by buying their product or inadvertently sharing your personal account information with them so they can then use it for their own financial gain.
You can avoid Twitter spam: 1. When spammers follow you block them. 2. Report them to Twitter. 3. Don’t share your email address in Twitter messages.
Michelle
Since yesterday I’ve had over 60 followers come in. At first I was happy that I gained that many until I decided to check it out finding that they were all “adult pleasure” porn accounts. I also couldn’t help but notice some of them were the same faces. Also I noticed that they were all created on the 31st of August 2011. Of course I’ve blocked them all but it’s starting to annoy me that everytime I get a follower I have to go check them first. I shouldn’t have to do this and should feel safe about my followers without worrying about porn. If anyone knows how to stop this please let me know. Thank you. @BethCole95
Beth: Don’t just block them – report them to Twitter as spammers. You might also check Twitter’s blog and their network status update page to see if they’re seeing an unusually high level of this type of activity. You might also consider changing your password in case you don’t recognize one of those as a spammer and click on a link they share that could allow them to hack into your account.
Michelle
@Michelle Rafter
Amen to that!
They should provide users with an option to block adult content and offensive content. Something like Facebook uses to unmark top stories. It’s not that complicated to achieve really.
Unfortunately, Twitter only gives you the option of blocking spam and X-rated content after the fact – something I do religiously. I’m not enough of a tech geek to know how easy it would be to block beforehand – seems like if they could do it they would have by now.
Michelle
I know this post is almost 3 years old, but I found it after doing a google search, “can you block porn/spam on twitter.” And I agree wholeheartedly with your points. I just joined twitter yesterday (Feb. 13, 2012) and so far I’ve gotten almost 30 porn/spam/x-rated followers. Though I have blocked them, I think there should be a way to filter these out before they even get to your inbox. If Twitter wants to allow this, they can find a way to let users to opt-out of receiving this type of contact, especially since it is very offensive to MANY. ~~TheBeamsss
That is terrible – I don’t know what to tell you; I still get the occasional porn spam on Twitter but not in the amount you describe. I block it all but still am not aware of anything else to do except keep complaining about it.
Michelle
Even though this is a really old post, I came across it while having the same exact problem and had to comment. I joined Twitter in March of 2011 and just recently, in the last two weeks or so I’ve been getting a bunch of pornographic spam followers on Twitter. It was like 5 or 6 at a time who I reported for spam and blocked, but they didn’t disappear right away like they usually do. So, I sent an email through the reporting form. They sent me one back explaining what I had to do which I’d already done and I sent them a reply saying I had done that and wanted these people off my followers list, because they were highly offensive. Only then, did they disappear. My account was fine for about a week and then it happened again a couple of days ago. I’m at the point now where I’ve protected my tweets so I can deny their request and it really pisses me off, because I shouldn’t have to do that. There are people I follow who don’t follow me back and won’t be able to see my tweets because of it, but it’s the only solution I have at the moment. I’m an elementary teacher and having porn on my followers list is a bad and inaccurate reflection of me when people look at my followers list. Twitter really needs to come up with a better method of weeding out spammers especially the pornographic ones, there needs to be a pre-screening process or something. I shouldn’t have to worry about being followed by these pornographic spammers when I’m not on Twitter for a day or so, having to check my account for it every day (even on days when I don’t have the desire or time to log on) and reporting/blocking them on a daily basis. Why should I have to protect my tweets just to not be subjected to these perverts?
Thanks Susan. My beef is that I didn’t even have to click on a new follower’s profile to see porn – it was in their avatar (photo) and even at that tiny size it was obvious it was porn, and pretty disgusting at that. I had turned on email notification of new followers but have set up my email program not to automatically download photos with new messages, so I didn’t see anything in Twitter’s email notifications of new followers that I didn’t want to see – that’s another step someone could take. Now I’ve turned email notifications off as well, partly to avoid the spam problem, but also because the number of new followers I was getting was becoming overwhelming to look through everyday so I’d just been deleting them unopened anyway.
Anyone else have suggestions for solutions, let me know.
Michelle R.
Lately, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable blocking people. Now if some new follower wants to talk to me about getting rich quick, boosting my Twitter follower numbers fast! or even has a suspicious looking Twitter account name, I do not give them the benefit of the doubt and just block them.
Since posting this earlier today, I’ve discovered this Twitter customer support forum – if you follow the link you’ll see there are lots of other people on it talking about how fed up they are with Twitter spam, especially porn spam.
Michelle
Thanks for sharing this unfortunate story. I’m so sorry this happened, but it does point up one of the reasons why Twitter has age restrictions. I’m going to guess that your daughter’s account was followed by a spam-bot, so nobody actually looked at the photo in her profile, it was just a computer program following Twitter users at random. As Twitter continues to grow, execs there are going to have to figure out a better way to deal with porn.
Michelle
Agree on all points but one – Twitter isn’t making money yet, unless you count the $55 million in venture funds they’ve raised. Maybe if they were they’d have some $$ to sink into better anti-spam technology.
MVR