The same is true of email, and some forums and blogs that don't filter spam properly (the amount of spam I get on Wordpress is crazy but it all gets filtered out through WP's own spam filter or my approvals process, and moderating on three forums, I see the amount of spam we get daily that has to be deleted, even with anti-spam features in place), not to mention the spam wasteland that is MySpace these days - whilst spam and spambots are annoying, they're just a feature of the internet (much as those useless bits of advertising paper stuffed inside magazines are a feature of that medium). They don't make any studies invalid, nor any medium too difficult to study, they just add complications (to certain types of study) but if they're affecting our data, I guess we need to come up with strategies to accommodate that in the way we've done for 'lurkers' rather than simply saying 'it's too hard'. Spam followers could potentially be an interest of study on their own - you mention the oddest things (I mentioned lamb once, and I'm a vegetarian) and get a spam account for that thing following you. (Hello, my name is @ruthdeller or @RadShef and I like abusing brackets) Ruth -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman Sent: 08 March 2011 17:25 To: aoir list Subject: [Air-L] spammers & tweeters (2) Here's a problem with spammers on tweeters. Suppose you're doing a diffusion of info study, and you want to track RTs and even the memes over a network chain. Trouble is, some worthy folks (like someone who begins with @z) just let all Followers in, even though I betcha most are now spammers who never check Your posts (Narcissim, thy name is Twitter Spammers). So any chain of communication is going to end with them as black holes, and we're going to get quant underestimates of the extent to which memes propogate on Twitter. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/