GOOD!

Tired of having to block spammers every other time I tweet. Maybe this will help ease the spam onslaught.

Some of us actually use Twitter to, you know, socialize and network.

Radical concept, I know.... :rolleyes:

Yep I agree. THis is great news. Spammy tactics are just not worth it in the long run

These programs do not help you build an "empire". They help perpetuate the idea that online marketers are a bunch of scamming idiots who will do anything to make a quick buck. The shutdown of programs like these make things better for all of us.

As far as millions being left on the table? Trust me, spam tweets to accounts who didn't want to hear from you was not going to put that money into your account :rolleyes:.

no you get targeted followers from getting followers the natural way. Ask me how I know?

After over 15 years online, I've seen all the tricks that spammers come up with, and people are getting fed up. So that is why they are getting aggressive with stopping spammers dead in their tracks.

I very glad these tools have been eliminated. Spammers have given Internet marketers a bad name, have given this forum a bad name, and frankly, if the only way you can make a living is by spamming, then you don't actually have a business, you have a fly-by-night operation that could be shut down at any given time.

Maybe we can get a free copy of your videos then? Just saying

No worries. They won't come after individuals.

I Noticed That To Yesterday, My TweetAdder No Longer Works Which Means My Music Business Will Fail..I Banked In $6,000 A Month Usind Tweet Adder..And Thats True..I FEEL SO BAD FOR US PEOPLE WHO THINK BIG...
People Who Work A 9-5 Don't Understand Or Don't Think Big On How They can Really Start Up A Business Using Tweetadder...

Damn..It Just Stopped Working 4/30/12...........I think its good bye for TweetAdder

I should give you an infraction for posting a "Bruins" victory dance...

A Habs Fan

Hit them in the nuts, Twitter! Sock one to their balls for me, ok?

I see Twitter hired Wilson Sonsini. Heavy hitters in Silicon Valley.

Good grief, spammers are dumber than a box of rocks.

fLufF
--

This..

That's exactly what I was talking about.

Posting relevant tweets to relevant followers isn't spamming.

Whatever, you guys do you and I'll do me.

So someone creates spamming software (in general - not just speaking of anyone/anything mentioned on this thread), and then Twitter is supposed to use their income, time, resources and manpower to fight it instead of going after the people who created the problem in the first place? Seriously?

I really don't get your line of reasoning....

Garrie,Sometimes that's true. I'm dealing with an issue like that here, right now.

We have two WSOs designed for use as bots on LinkedIn. One has only one purpose: Automated bulk posting to groups. That's a pretty clear answer: It violates the rules for the WSO section.

The other has a lot more functions, and both the advertising and instructions teach using the tools in a respectful fashion and not spamming. If that was all that was involved, there'd be no question but that it was okay to sell here.

But how will the members here be likely to use it?

Hard to tell for sure, but I could guess.

Do I go with the clear intent of the creator, or what I see as the probable use by the buyers? Or do I leave it up to the buyers and LinkedIn? That's a Really Tough Call.

As far as Twitter suing the sellers of the other software, I think that has to do more with a known certainty that simply using the software entails violations of their terms of service. The multiple account creator almost certainly does. So does anything that auto-follows and auto-unfollows. (I believe auto-follow-back is allowed.) I've mentioned this here in these discussions for a long time, but no-one who advocates using the software seems to want to acknowledge the very clear terms of service issues involved.


Paul

every company WILL follow twitter's steps when its good for them to do it. Most of these social networks indeed need spam and bots and everything on their start when they are free to grow in numbers.

when they start the ad services then they start to have a problem cause no advertiser want to pay for fake views.

...well that's a wild guess I am making now. At least if I had my own social network thats what i was going to think i guess!

Just the name of the software says it all for me - Tweet ATTACKS.

You also need only look at his latest product:
http://pinblaster.org/
"Pin Blaster is the first and only Pinterest bot in the market"

Is he really using his great programming skills in the best way possible??

Good intentions are only worth so much. This guy was obviously making good money from selling a tool that he knew was being used by a lot of people to spam Twitter.

I'm sure if you went to prison you would meet a lot of nice and talented guys in there -- in fact a lot of criminals are very smart people.

I am not calling him a criminal, that's for the law to decide but what I am saying is that even those with the greatest intentions can still break the law and it doesn't make it any less wrong.

His tool was being used by a lot of people for no good. He knew this and was still happily profiting from it. That's his problem and that is what will be very hard for him to explain.

If someone has talent then there are plenty of different ways they can use it. He chose to use it in a very questionable manner.

The average Twitter user who is not using the service for anything more than what it was meant for would never really need to automate all these tasks.

The more likely scenario is he shut his website down after being served to stave off a 'treble damages' award should it get to that.

What you can be liable for before being put on notice and the penalties that can be assessed once you are put on notice are vastly different.

~Bill

Will,I believe Joe was referring to the chaos and thread management that goes with this sort of news.

General comments...

Any time someone takes down a tool that's designed to violate the TOS of social sites or SEs, I'm going to be cheery about it. I rather strongly dislike wanton destructiveness.

Anyone who doesn't think this sort of thing represents a serious, destructive attack is either inexperienced, naive, or rationalizing to excuse their behavior.

This forum is a tiny little alcove in the ocean of the Internet, but we're a monster in this particular market. As that growth has happened, we've gotten to see even more than in the past just how damaging this stuff can be. Every month, it gets worse. And there's a lot more going on than most people have ever seen, even if they've moderated large and active forums before.

Take down the people making all that garbage happen? Bravo!

Tough on the programmers? Maybe, but they chose that path. The people whose sites they damage or destroy did not.

I understand Rob's distress over his friend's troubles. I'd suggest that there's another side to it.

I remember when I first opened a Twitter account. I was getting spammed dozens of times a day. Checking the DMs was becoming a time sink, so I just funneled everything into a separate folder and ignored it. Twitter went from being a potentially useful networking tool to something to be avoided.

I'd wager I'm not the only one who responded that way.

Twitter has had to spend a lot of money and man hours to fight that and keep it from completely overwhelming their system and rendering it useless for everyone. (How much money would you guess they've spent on it so far? I don't know, but I'd bet it's in the millions.)

The folks who made money using TA only did so because Twitter was successful enough at fighting the spam that people still used the service. They profited from those efforts until they became the active target of the fight. And now it's "No fair!"

Screw that.

The more parasites thrive, the faster they kill the host.

You want to know how destructive this stuff is, folks? If this place was left unmoderated, it would get so bad within a week that hundreds of regular posters would abandon it. In 2 weeks it would be in the thousands. By week 3, the place would be nothing but bots and spammers talking to each other.

That's an optimistic assessment, by the way. And most of the damage is done with these "harmless" tools.

Don't believe the timeline? I've seen crowds here in revolt over all the garbage when it happened that we didn't have anyone moderating for as little as 12 hours.

I would guess that we delete 1500 or more spams a day, plus various pre-emptive maneuvers that keep out some hundreds of others. Most of that because of the members who report the stuff. And that's not counting the other scumbags we have to deal with.

And that's just here. We're lucky. We have a largish crew of experienced people who do the "official" moderating, plus hundreds of members who report the stuff. 6 forum-wide mods, and a big group of folks who carry the load in some of the sub-forums. Plus someone watching the blogs. Plus the tech dude who handles the automated blocking systems.

Most sites just don't have the resources to fight off the leeches, and they end up going to pre-moderation (nothing gets seen until someone approves it) or closing down. Some can manage with automated systems, but they pay a price there, too.

That's the gift of the programmers who create these tools, and the creatures who use them.

Bill said, a few posts up:Well, gee. That's easy. Learn to live without Google!

Strangely, once you do that, Google loves you. Funny how that works, eh?

Of course, you can blithely continue on, destroying other people's sites for a few more drops of page rank or whatever. Gotta get those SERPs at any cost, and to hell with what you're doing to other people's work and livelihoods, eh?

How many people would lose how much income if this place was taken over by spam and the WSO section went away?

Don't tell me this is innocent, or that you have no choice. That's bull. There are a lot of other ways to get traffic, and they don't all involve leeching off the efforts of people willing to do something creative and constructive.


Paul

You are exactly right, and I hope it does. The way I understand things, it is Twitter setting a precedent that spamming through automated tools will not be tolerated. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Avoiding the fate is simple: don't create or use software that violates a service's TOS. If you cannot manage that, then you are kind of asking for it, aren't you?

That's quite a leap to make, and I don't see how you arrived there from this lawsuit alone.

I hope they succeed, and if I was a betting man I would put money on them doing so.

Wow, talk about jumping on the bandwagon.

Should they go after the PRL sellers who decide to infect the web with their spam, just because they have decided that someone can have the rights to their articles?

What about the people with dozens of Amazon niche sites, because someone really needs to find out about products from people who have never used them rather than just look on Amazon?

Or people who promote CPA offers, because someone is really going to win a new Ipad?

Don't get me started on people who promote offers each week to newbies, because they really need these things to make money online and you are only "helping them".

How many of you have build backlinks with the purpose of gaming Google in order to spam your websites at the top of the search engines?

I suppose it's OK because Twitter has a big bank balance.

Sleep easy tonight.

Actually, you're wrong. Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic))

TweetAttacks is indeed a spam bot. I'm sorry that your friend chose to build an app that automated unsolicited Twitter messages. You say he's a good programmer... I'd have to agree. His app was so good at what it does that it's been targeted by Twitter. That's a testimony to how effective it is.

There's a bigger play here that some people are missing: THIS IS NOT ABOUT SPAM

TweetAttacks is being targeted because it allows normal Twitter users to build a mini-ad network via Twitter, thereby bypassing the Twitter Ad Network. Twitter is fighting these apps in order to consolidate control of their ad platform.

It's not so much about Spam as it is about Money. The worst thing you can do is try to steal marketshare from a platform ON IT'S OWN TURF.

Whoever wrote TweetAttacks may have been briliant, but he wasn't smart enough to realize he was setting himself up to compete directly against Twitter in a battle that he can't win.

you are taking this way too personally. It's great that you are defending your friend but...
Don't try to justify people's actions by saying that the economy is forcing people to do anything for money. That's a load of rubbish. People with integrity won't just do anything for money.

I'm going to say this one last thing and I'm sorry to be blunt, but in my opinion, programmers who create BOTS know exactly who their target market is.

Ooh, when that happens (and I think cases like this are showing that it can't really be considered an "if" situation anymore) the forum is going to be very entertaining. Assuming you aren't a mod of course. Poor guys.

I'll still be cheering though. My business doesn't depend on those tools to survive. Anyone else who builds the foundation of their business on relationships and quality for their users/customers will feel the same way, I'm sure.

I get why there are people that are not so happy with this, really, I do. They chose to take a gamble on these kinds of tactics though, and they are facing the consequences for placing a bad bet. That's business. That's life.

/me waves vigorously

Joshua,That was mild. I didn't really say what I think of this stuff. Just the factual assessment of one small part of their activities.

My opinions on the use of these techniques and technologies is not printable in this forum.


Paul

That's just one of many that I've seen of the finest writing on the topic and a few of them were a lot more "venomous", and I mean that in a good way. :p

Christiani,Rob is worried about a friend. That's not something to be lightly dismissed.

I may disagree with him on where the culpability lies for the behavior (and I may even be wrong in the spirit of the thing, if his friend has the intentions he claims), but I strongly admire that kind of concern for a good friend.

Honest loyalty is too damned rare these days to ignore.


Paul

That sounds like hell.

So, since tweetattacks.com is down, the software won't launch. Or is there a solution to this?

Nothing to be confused about here. I think things will continue along just as they have for as long as I can remember... if you break the law, you get into trouble.

Isn't that the way it has always been?

People seem to think just because it's done online it's less serious. It's not the case at all.

When it comes to third party sites, those needing to use any type of bot to automate tasks are generally not using that site for the intended purpose. Can you imagine how social Twitter would be if everyone's accounts were just a bunch of bots posting and replying to one another?

I say good riddance. This gets rid of a few rogue programmers.

tl;dr poetry

Isn't that what 80% of Twitter already is?

Rationalize your behavior much?

Fixed that for you.

@WillR, I got what you were implying at least. So, take that for what it is worth :p.

Well that's pretty ridiculous. I have a Twitter account and I do not run into not one single spam tweet ... ever. Why? Because I use it socially and am very selective about who I follow.

Don't follow spammers ... no spam and there are a lot of very interesting people on Twitter who aren't Twitter spammers. Spammers probably aren't aware of this because they've never actually used the site in the manner that was intended when it was built, and by the way in case you're not aware, it wasn't built as a channel for marketers to push their wares.

You realize they are one of the defendants as well, right?

:rolleyes:

It's not exactly feasible to go after all the spammers at once, now is it? The point of this case is to set a precedent. Once it has been shown that these companies/individuals are viewed as spammers by the courts, and that Twitter will take these people for every dollar they didn't deserve and more, two things are going to happen.

1. Some spammers will get smart and scurry away before they find themselves being served with legal papers.

And unfortunately,

2. Some will inevitably think that they are too smart (or just anonymous enough not to get caught), and keep going. Twitter (and other platforms will soon follow their lead) will hang these suckers out to dry.

Whether it's by automation or by humans hired, calling it a social media "strategy" when it violates the TOS of the social media site is just an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.

There are legitimate companies that do outsource real social media "strategies" that don't involve breaking TOS or spamming. They create a social presence on the sites and interact with potential customers.

An actual social media strategy wouldn't even require automation, but they do often hire a social media specialist to take care of their social media presence.

Your sentient-less daemon robot does not make connections. It's not human and not capable of connecting. It's only purpose to create and send mass commercial messages with it's human equivalent being something like sending 50,000 snake oil salesmen or "carnival barkers" to annoy legitimate users passing by.

A twitter spamming bot does nothing to preserve integrity. It offends a lot of people.

Yep, but those services make it easier and allow the spamming to occur on a much larger scale. It is the scourge of internet marketers everywhere who have to deal with a negative reputation that idiots cause by looking for an easy way out.

If the best justification you have is that "a human can do it too, so it's OK for a bot to do it", then you are sadly looking at a very weak case.



I'd say that bolded statement is questionable at best. Bot creators know exactly what they are creating, knew that TOS were going to be broken, and just who would buy their product.

EDIT: I took the time to look at your twitter feed, so your defense of these bots makes sense. You're a customer.

Fortunately, your opening sentences tell you everything you need to know about why your argument is invalid:

You're playing in Twitter's ballpark. It is a privilege, not a right to use their service. So if you want to operate on there, then Twitters definition is the only one that holds any weight.

So the fact that you see it as a "virtual helper" doesn't mean much if you intend to operate on the platform long term. You play by Twitter's rules, not the other way around.

Hi,

Spamming Bots = Bed Bugs

Needs insecticide.

What Twitter did is doing me a favour.

:rolleyes: Spam bots aren't like guns, not seeing how that platitude fits at all.

Tools help spammers spam people, and allow them to do it on a much larger scale. If they can be taken out of their grubby little fingers, then I am all for it.

Not seeing the mass exodus either. You give spammers waaaayy too much credit. With that amount of forward thinking they would be building their own business on real, long term foundations.

If they get more 'major' they'll be getting named in the next lawsuit. You seem to have conflated the terms 'spammers' and 'successful IMs.' They really aren't the same thing.

I find your high and mighty attitude typical of the self entitled marketer who thinks {Twitter|Facebook|Google|YouTube|Squidoo|Hubpages| EzineArticles|
Pinterest|ETC} is yours to {market|spam} however you wish to. You don't like the "big boys" running their own sites and setting their own terms? Build one yourself and let everyone spam the bejeezus out of it.

You're right, it is about automation: the automation of spamming.

Unfortunately, it never will. F***ing spammers evolve too fast.

Don't get your hopes up too high.

Don't see how this is about that at all. Clarify your claim.

:rolleyes: That's a mighty wide paint brush you're using there. Try using one like this:



Instead of one like this:



EDIT: I'd thank you Suzzane; but I'm out.