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TrueTwit: how to turn yourself into a Spammer

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Tweet Bot
Bots? What bots? Illustration by Steve Talkowski

TrueTwit Validation is a service that lets you verify if the person following you is a bot or not. Of course I am getting these verifications from people who use their accounts for spam as well as real tweets. You just have to love the irony.

If you wonder why I would follow anyone who spams, when you follow people in the adult industry you are often risking a little spam.  I follow the person to vet them. If they are all spam, I unfollow. Plenty of people I follow are a mix of spam and real tweets.

If you sign up with TrueTwit, every time someone follows you they receive an auto-DM that asks them to click a link and fill out a Captcha to verify that they are human.

Anyone can sign up with the service for 30 days for free. Then you no longer have to receive these annoying DM’s or fill out a “verify you are human” Captcha. And after the free trial, you pay $20.

I have received an increasing number of TrueTwit Validations from people. I believe this is because by signing up they don’t have to receive the auto-DM’s anymore.  However, they are now perpetuating the spam by avoiding it themselves!

Ironically a lot of the people who are sending me the TrueTwit validation auto-DM’s are people who use their accounts for Twitter spam. The whole point of the service is to help you avoid it – they even advertise that it does this. That doesn’t actually make sense. If someone follows you, they cannot DM you. They are not appearing in your Twitter stream. So what spam are you getting from them?  The only way you would get spam from them is if you auto-follow people.  Here is an easy solution: don’t auto-follow!

And by the way, this is not a sure-fire way of preventing bots from following you.  If the bot owner signs up with TrueTwit they will not have to fill out the Captcha.

I read a great blog post about TrueTwit. It essentially answered my questions.

Basically, why would anyone want to use this?

  1. Who cares if a bot follows you?
    If you have quality tweets and engagement, the majority of your followers will be real people. So if you have a couple of bots, does it really matter?
  2. Why do you want to spam your new followers?
    If you are using TrueTwit then you are sending an auto-DM to your new followers that is basically spam.  Except now you are not spamming them with your own site, you are spamming them with someone else’s.
  3. How many followers are you losing?
    How many people don’t click that link? How many don’t fill out the Captcha?  Because if they don’t then you are not getting their follow.  So how many people are you losing because you are trying to prevent a bot that can get around the validation anyway?

So do your followers a favor, and just say no to TrueTwit.

Porn not Verified on Twitter?

Are you verified on Twitter? Does it matter? Is it important?

For some people getting verified on Twitter is extremely important. Twitter verification is essentially a big blue check mark that says you are the real deal! It is Twitter’s way of establishing authenticity behind a well know and public persona. It is used for public figures, ie. politicians, celebrities, rock stars, etc.

Jenna Jameson verified on Twitter

One issue that a lot of adult stars face is the inability to get verified. Maybe someone already claimed your name and won’t give it up, not doing anything with it, just cyber-squatting.  Maybe they claimed your name to spam.  Maybe they are just posing as you.

Your name is a brand. You have worked hard at getting name recognition and you should be able to reap the rewards, not some random person in cyber-space who doesn’t know you from Adam. What is even worse than someone squatting on your name is if they are spamming or misrepresenting you.  Are they damaging the good name you have built?  This is, of course, why Twitter started verifying to begin with.  But many people in the adult industry have had great difficulty getting verified, or getting Twitter to help them resolve issues of cyber-squatting or spam/misrepresentation.  And yes we speculate discrimination.

Pornstar Tweet felt strong about this issue as well and created their own verification system for the stars they list. They vet the stars on their list and with any they can without a doubt authenticate, the readily offer their own check mark. Though unfortunately their check mark only appears on the list on their site and doesn’t translate to the Twitter avatar.

However, Twitter not verifying is quickly becoming a mute point because they are no longer verifying accounts. Since the change to New Twitter, many verified accounts have even lost their prized check mark.  Though support@twitter does say they are restoring them to their rightful owners.

The change to new twitter seems to come with the promise of a change to the verification system.  Apparently the verification system was in its beta form and Twitter will be rolling out a new and improved system.  Maybe this new verification system will be more open to verifying adult stars who have worked hard for name recognition and deserve to have that little blue check mark!