Hey @Twitter, I Just Got Reply @Spam 41 Times At Once!

I’ve written previously about how the replies mechanism on Twitter isn’t afforded the same level of protection that is provided with the direct message system.

Here’s a great example why. A few moments ago, I was hit with dozens of @reply spam messages all at once. And I mean, literally all at once.

(click on the image above to see the full list – it’s too big for this page.)

I now have to manually block each of these accounts in turn, one-by-one, to prevent this from happening again. From these accounts. What’s to stop another load of spam accounts doing the same thing to me ten minutes from now? And every ten minutes after that?

What’s to stop them doing it to you? Using this method, how easy would it be to ruin Twitter for somebody? For everybody? We can unfollow people so they can’t do this to us via a direct message, but replies are fair game. Block one account, and another one is right there to take its place. And another one. And another one.

They’ve even got Tom from Myspace involved (see the pic). This is not just broken, it’s totally fubared.

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