@twitterspam
April 15th, 2008 |
Colin Carmichael maintains there is no such thing as Twitter spam. Colin recently asked friends on Twitter to send him their thoughts on this. He has published some of the responses, including mine, on his blog.
I think he is well intentioned, but his arguments are simplistic and miss the mark.
Spam is generally thought of as unwanted marketing email, but in an environment like Twitter, where email plays such a trivial role, spam is harder to define, so I employ the broader definition of spam as “forced, unwanted marketing messages.”
I am not referring to Twitter’s notification emails when I say Twitter has spam. I am talking about the interaction that occurs when someone follows you on Twitter, and the ways in which information gathered about you from Twitter can be used.
Upon receiving a new follower, the majority of Twitter users validate that follower by checking their profile. Colin says there is “no reason beyond ego or sheer curiosity to check out folks who follow you.” Nonsense. Twitter is many things, among them a social network. Every social network has a procedure and etiquette for adding connections. Of course I am going to see if a new follower is someone I should follow back. I’m there to have conversations. That implies two-way communications.
We all make decisions on Twitter regarding who we follow back. Many people who follow us are friends, colleagues, business partners, people in an allied field. When I am followed by someone, I check out who they are before deciding whether to follow back, and that’s when I find that @toshibaflat (no longer active, but I was followed by this user) is advertising for a flat screen. I have now received an overt, unwanted marketing message.
Colin proposes that you can’t prevent a Google search, but what does he imagine people are doing when they try to learn about you through search? Lots of Google searches are done by bots who then spam you if you were unfortunate enough to have your email address published somewhere. It is not the fact that someone is following you, or doing Google searches on you, that is problematic. It is what they do with the information they gather.
Privacy is a delicate matter covered by both law and convention. Colin sees the expectation of privacy as simply meaning “you published the information on what you knew was a public forum and therefore should have no expectation of privacy.” (Paraphrasing, not quoting.) That is a logical non-sequitur. What matters is not that the information is publicly available, but what people do with that information.
If I publish a contact email address on my blog, is it OK for people to send me emails promoting porn and Cialis? Of course not.
And just because something does not violate the letter of the law, does not mean it is ethical, or that it does not violate privacy. If your house is close to the street and I stand on the sidewalk and stare into your window, and observe your private life because you left the curtains open, that is perfectly legal, but is also very creepy.
The problem here is confusing Twitter’s Terms of Service with reasonable behavior and respect. It’s sad, really, that we use semantics to excuse bad behavior. But most Twitter users just plain don’t like spam, in whatever form, including being followed by purely commercial entities. And that should count for something.
Tags: twitter spam, colin carmichael, privcay
| Sphere This |
What this rationale doesn’t take into account is that while it may be inappropriate to spam on twitter, there are spammers already out there, and spam can and will infiltrate twitter because people will use it as a means to get their message across (as seen with email and blog-comments). The only difference (saving grace) I see with Twitter, is that you can not receive DM’s unless you’re friends, so the amount of spam is limited, and you can instantly block the spammer.
However, if monitoring other people by following them is considered spam, then I am “spamming” with every RSS feed. I think there has to be degrees of separation taken into account, and recognize that twitter in some regards is a short sentence blog post.
Comment by Jessica Hasson — April 15, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
I think one of the things that makes Twitter so popular is that it can be many things to many people, but I have to agree with you that my updates are public information and it HAS to be OK with me that people read them without my knowing. I would be bothered though if people used them to stalk me, or steal my identity, or even sell to me, as I would any other commercial use.
Fine line as they say. Would it be OK to sell me WordPress design services? Sure. Home loans? No.
Constitutional scholars hold that the 1st Amendment is about freedom OF speech, not freedom to speak. It guarantees freedom FROM speech as well. Oh well, another post for another time.
Comment by joel — April 15, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
I’ve read this post several times and I think that your thoughts only strengthen Colin’s argument. There are many gross presumptions of what Twitter ‘is’ - you seem to see it as a very serious social networking tool - nothing less… How you equate your voluntary investigation of a follower as a “forced, unwanted marketing messages” still eludes me I am not convinced that there are any obvious ethical rules for Twitter use - which is the premise you’re using to substantiate your argument. Twitter is clearly not behaving as you would like it too. Too bad.
Comment by Michael — April 15, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
[...] an opposing view, take a look at SocializedPR’s response to Colin’s claim that Twitter has no spam. Upon receiving a new follower, the majority of [...]
Pingback by Stop Twitter Spam » Colin Carmichael gets no Twitter Spam — April 15, 2008 @ 1:26 pm
Hey Joel,
Glad we can have this debate - and I do think it’s an important one to have. Whether my arguments are simplistic or miss the mark, I’ll leave to our respective readers to decide.
I guess my biggest problem with the TwitterSpam exists argument is that it is predicated on the notion that you are required to:
a) receive follower notifications
b) ‘validate’ new followers
c) ‘follow back’ everyone who follows you
None of these are required for Twitter to be meaningful platform for mass conversation. I simply suggest that it is posisble to allow the conversation itself to determine whose tweets to follow rather than the rather arbitrary act of following.
Comment by Colin Carmichael — April 15, 2008 @ 1:27 pm
@Jessica - You are not “spamming” simply by monitoring someone’s Tweetstream. It is the blatant act of doing so (in some cases MULTIPLE times) to get attention for yourself, or for your page-views/clickthru rates.
@colin - Nearly half of the truly interesting people I have connected with on Twitter were not known to me until they followed me. When I get the notification, I check their profile to see what they write, and if they interact with others I already know. I click across to their listed sites, to see if I might be interested in subscribing to their feeds.
If someone chooses to follow me with the express purpose of getting me to notice their site where they are celling make enhancement, hypnosis, weight-loss, baldness cures, or how to get rich in real estate…
…AND they have a following/followed-by ration of 20:1…
…AND they only have FIVE FREAKING UPDATES…
…AND they are all tinyurl links back to their SPAM BLOG…
…THEN it is SPAM. I can’t see how you can possibly notice it for anything OTHER than what it is.
By your definitions, a SPAM email isn’t really spam until you decide to open it. Never mind that it’s stolen my bandwidth and server space, and now a few seconds of my attention.
By your definitions, a SPAM fax about a toner scam isn’t really spam unless you bother to read it.
Comment by Ike — April 15, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
[...] mass communication application, has reached what appears to be critical mass. The howls of “SPAM!” and rants about rules are pretty good indications that Twitter has a solid toe-hold in the social [...]
Pingback by A Business Case for Twitter | Social Media Group — May 5, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
[...] mass communication application, has reached what appears to be critical mass. The howls of “SPAM!” and rants about rules are pretty good indications that Twitter has a solid toe-hold in the social [...]
Pingback by A Business Case for Twitter « Social Media Mavens / Experts — May 7, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
[...] some interesting discussions here and on Twitter back in April about the spam situation on Twitter, including some spirited [...]
Pingback by socialized » So Twitter does have spam after all! — July 24, 2008 @ 9:14 am