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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I'm a big fan of Ben Thompson, and I'm not necessarily on Twitter's side here, but this to me seems more like a case of Ben whining about "Spam is when someone else sends it".

From his own words, this "Stratechery Interviews" account was a new account that only sent out tweets of links from multiple locations around the world. In other words, the only thing really distinguishing it from spam on a technical level is that Ben liked the content it was tweeting about.

Sure, I'd be annoyed too, but Ben's rage tweets just show to me that even the most rational among us become emotional when we don't get something want.

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It's important to note that the suspended account didn't send any replies, or even retweet or like any other accounts. Presumably it didn't send any unsolicited DMs either.

The account was not harming or annoying anyone. Does it even qualify as "spam"?

It pains me to think that we gave up on RSS for this.

Twitter used to have RSS! Unfortunately they killed RSS support in 2012.

I don’t think you’re familiar with this use of Twitter. Since accounts can’t easily be partially followed by certain keywords or hashtags, creators will create additional accounts as notification channels for some of their content that their audience can choose to follow. It’s not spam because the delivery is wanted by those following the account. These channels don’t try to engage accounts that are uninterested in them.

Is that useful account hard to disambiguate from a spam account? Yes, but that’s Twitter’s job here.

Look at email. People get tons of notification-only email that are little more than links. Email providers simply have to figure out how to block spam without blocking legitimate email, and they largely have. Social has the same obligation.

If only there was some technology that easily allowed people to be notified of certain content only ....

RSS, we miss you

He also provides RSS feeds. The Twitter feed is a convenience. Reducing the demand for Twitter notifications is beyond the ability of creators/publishers.

Yeah, it's a shame that social network apps, which have largely supplanted feed reader apps, never integrated RSS feeds into their products

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. Twitter had RSS support and killed it about a decade ago in pursuit of their strategy to grow by hurting the third party ecosystem that had grown around Twitter. I still find that decision to be disappointing.

Some RSS readers support following Twitter accounts, but they use the third party app API. I personally follow Twitter accounts in NewsBlur.

Wasn't being sarcastic, just lamenting the fact that it's not supported in today's social media apps.

Gotcha. Sorry. I wish RSS feeds were everywhere, too.

My $.02, he's raging not about losing something that he wants, but instead about the double-standard. If this account posting links is getting banned, why is it that Twitter seems so hell bent on leaving all the fake Elon accounts that are spamming people to get free crypto?

Agreed on this point. This easily could have been a bot farming reputation by retweeting someone else's content.

It is shocking though how much much more blatant spam goes unchecked. Pretty much every tweet by popular accounts has a slew of crypto spam replies.

It also goes to show that much of what passes for "reasoned, non-emotional discourse" on HN can be written by people that don't always hold true to that stance when stuff they care about is affected.

Ben Thomson should hire somebody to run his social media. Admin work of any kind will comes with hassles. A tech thought leader writing so childishly over a hiccup makes me question the value of his insights. But then I was never really sold on his writing to begin with, as it's a little too Economist-y. Nicely written, 30k ft view stuff for the managerial classes.

> new account that only sent out tweets of links from multiple locations around the world. > In other words, the only thing really distinguishing it from spam on a technical level is that Ben liked the content it was tweeting about.

I guess the issue is that these conditions alone are now enough to warrant a ban 'on a technical level', when a few years accounts like that existed with no issue. Spam's a huge issue on Twitter, no doubt, but it seems like things are getting worse and it's fair to ask for some accountability.

New account. So? People create new accounts all the time. How do accounts come into existence?

Tweeting out links. So? One of the most basic use cases there are, for example a brand tweeting links to press releases.

From multiple locations. So? You mean like every multinational?

None of these factors have any smoking gun indicator to decisively and permanently suspend an account. On the other end of the spectrum we have a zillion crypto bots having the exact same avatar, name variations, auto-tweeting within the second of a main tweet being posted, and this is not spam.

This is faulty analysis. Of course not any single one of these things by itself would indicate spam, but a yes, a brand new account that only tweets links, from multinational locations, would probably be spam the vast, vast majority of the time.

The problem is the word "probably". There's no smoking gun, just an increased likelihood. Yet a very definitive conclusion is made prematurely.

Even if you find such entity "spamming" links, it still doesn't meet the more traditional definition of spam. Said account does not notify anybody, does not comment, direct message, it's just self-spamming.

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