sarahintampa

An hour or so ago, I set up a new Twitter account. It’s not going to my primary account, I’m just going to use it to follow a different set of people than I do in my main account. It’s been a long time since I first joined Twitter, so the process provided me with an interesting look into the site’s current onboarding process.

After bypassing the suggested users, all general mainstream fare, I went about following the folks I wanted to add. 

What really shocked me was how quickly I was followed by spammers, marketers and porn girls. I already have a dozen or so followers, despite not publicizing this account’s creation at all. How do they find me, I wonder?

Some are obvious bots hoping to re-direct you to their shady websites, while others are clever re-tweeting bots that seem almost like a genuine account. I imagine a new user could be easily fooled into thinking they were real. 

And some of the profiles are so raunchy, I censored them in the image below. I signed up for Twitter, not for porn. 

This isn’t a new problem, by any means. And I know these sorts of accounts have been following me on @sarahintampa for years. But it’s still really disturbing to see this in the context of the first-time user experience. 

I don’t care that Twitter has a report spam button or an age limit of 13. If I had a teen, there’s no way I’d let them use Twitter as it is today. 

Frankly, Twitter should be ashamed of itself for letting the spam problem get this bad.