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by ripb 4118 days ago
>I think Twitter would have stopped these much earlier if they could.

If Twitter clamped down on bots on the site/network it could end up revealing a very unflattering (to investors) picture of the sites true user traction.

The site has struggled to grow to its targets and has a significant issue with people creating accounts and quickly abandoning the site.

So Twitter has a very large incentive to do nothing about the bots.
1 comments
ptlu 4118 days ago
While in terms of metrics bots might help Twitter's numbers look better I would say Twitter has a large incentive to do something about bots.

1. Bots degrade the experience for the regular user. The site feels less authentic with bots, and the quality of the content overall goes down. If you're trying to get eyes on Twitter, bot content does not help you.

2. Bots are not helpful when looking at your ad metrics. Bots are not actually viewing ads and are not interacting with them. If you're goal is to get actual eyeballs on ads, and showing those ads have impact then bots make your site look weaker.

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honksillet 4118 days ago
Re-IPO twitter was all about growth. There 1.0 API made making a spambot ridiculously easy. 1.1 is only a slight improvement. One problem is that line between real and bot has been blurred. There are many real accounts out there whose owner have attach bots to them. I frequently get bot follows only to see that I have been unfollowed in short order. The obvious hope is that I will reciprocate the follow and not notice the unfollow. But often these are coming from real accounts. One of the downsides of being a programmer and being interested in CS type things is that a the twitter circles I would be interested are loaded with these semi-faux/semi-real accounts. The result is that the spam to signal ratio is much too high.
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r3bl 4118 days ago
I'm just using a simple tactic: if the user follows more than 10k users, that means that he has no interest in my tweets and will probably never interact with me.

So, if I like what he is really doing, sure, I might follow him back. Otherwise, no way.

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