The following appeared in my twitter feed last night:
Corbyn tweet
Could it be that the legendary “forecaster” is resorting to twitter spamming to drum up business? (I have suggested the good folks at Twitter look into that possibility.) I counted 115 identical messages that went out at the same time last night in his twitter feed. I guess in spamming terms, that’s not a lot. So if Corbyn is a spammer, he’s not a terribly good one.
W00t!
I predict more of this.
Steve – A suggested business model – charge for those predictions, don’t give them away for free!
FYI Those tweets were to named individuals for specific reasons not ‘spam’ as you put it. Frankly its none of your business but what’s your prob?
Piers C
Piers – Thanks for dropping by, and for your thoughtful contribution.
My definition of spam is “unsolicited commercial advertisement sent in bulk”. Your missive was clearly unsolicited. It was clearly commercial. 115 identical missives counts, in my view, as bulk. And when you used my inbox, you made it, by definition, “my business”.
My “prob”, as you put it, is the risk that Twitter, which has become quite a useful tool, becomes caught up in the spammy clutter that infects all manner of Internet communication media (email, blog comments, etc.). Twitter has done a decent job of providing users tools to police the system. I’m comfortable using them to try to help enforce what I think are useful social norms, norms which I think you violated.
Also, I found the clumsy all caps self-promotion hilarious, and mockery is another of the tools at my disposal in this asymmetrical war.
P.S., Piers – I took the liberty of removing the link to your web site from your comment. I won’t allow you to use Inkstain to push traffic to your work.
Oink to sausage with journalistic economy.
Thanks for the nudge to my mood.