An Eclectic Mind

Want to make a difference? Get off your ass and do something.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from an acquaintance who was spreading the word about Fair Tax and the Online Tax Revolt. It said, in part:

This email is for everyone who pays federal income tax. This is NOT about politics. High taxes affect EVERYONE. The tax system is broken – Help fix it! I have never sent such a large mass email, but this is so important for America that I hope you will forgive this one, short intrusion into your life.

I am doing these things
1)I am learning about the FairTax (See for yourself: http://www.fairtax.org/ )
2)I am showing my support by joining the April 15th online march to Washington; I can’t make it in person, but I can make it from my computer (See for yourself: www.OnlineTaxRevolt.com )
3)I am telling everyone that I know

I am asking your help. Please, please, please help. Learn about the FairTax, show your support for the online march and spread the word. Every American can help in this way.

In a way, I guess I’m helping him spread the word. But that’s not my purpose here. My purpose is to discuss slacktivism.

What is Slacktivism?

Slacktivism, as defined by Wikipedia, is:

Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist.

I recommend reading the entire entry. It includes examples of what qualifies as slacktivism, just in case you’re not clear on it. It also includes several links to other resources that make good reading, if you’re interested in how words are created and come into our vocabulary.

Internet Petitions and Virtual Marches are Slacktivist Efforts

This isn’t the first time I’ve received an appeal to join an online effort in support or denial of some cause. I usually get petitions — I can’t tell you how many I’ve received over the years. Snopes.com has a great page about Internet petitions that uses the word slacktivism. If you read it, you’ll learn that “signing” something online is a complete waste of time — for you, anyway. What it does do is add your information to a mailing list that the person who started the petition can use for whatever he needs/wants to, which might include spam or selling to spammers.

Now I’m not saying that all people who start Internet petitions are spammers. I believe that some of these people really do think they’re making a difference. And I’m pretty sure the people who forward the petitions to me via e-mail think they’re making a difference, too.

But the brutal truth is that slacktivism does not get results. What gets results is repeatedly writing to legislators and sending it via snail mail (to start a paper trail), physically attending meetings and marches that get mainstream media attention, and volunteering your time and efforts at events that help spread the word and fire other people up to do the same. These are not slacktivist efforts. They take a real commitment to a cause that goes beyond five minutes of your time. They prove you’re serious and really want to make a difference.

Sending an e-mail message to everyone in your address book imploring them to submit their name, address, and zip code to a Web site to join a virtual march does nothing but make you feel as if you’re doing something — and possibly annoy the people in your address book who know better or don’t share your views.

I’ve Been There — I Know

I was a local activist here in Wickenburg for several years. I went to Town Council and Committee meetings and spoke up. I started petitions and got signatures. I wrote letters to the editor of the local paper and articles on my site about the town, wickenburg-az.com. I attended citizen action group meetings and helped them create materials to spread the word.

On some issues, we really did make a difference. When a developer tried to con the town into handing over our rodeo grounds so they could put a golf course on the land, I was one of about 100 people who attended a Planning and Zoning Meeting and spoke up against it. The developer was unprepared for the onslaught and didn’t have much to say in defense of his plan. Not only did the project stall, but the Town Manager and Town Planner who had considered the plan were subsequently fired. Now a For Sale sign stands at the frontage, offering some other developer the opportunity to build yet another subdivision we don’t need.

Although our petition to stop a housing development at the end of Wickenburg Airport’s runway was rejected on a technicality, we managed to stall the developer long enough so that he missed his window of opportunity. The housing bubble burst and demand for tract housing at the approach end of an airport runway dried up before the infrastructure was completely put in. Yes, he scraped the desert clean in his 40 or so acres of land, leaving an ugly scar on what was once pristine desert. But the project went bankrupt, leaving angry investors behind. I’ve heard the greedy bastard left town. Good riddance. I hope the same fate befalls the sardine-like housing project across the road and its developer.

Neither of these efforts would have succeeded if people like me had just sit on their asses, content to click a few buttons on their computer screens. It took a lot of real work, but in the end, it was worth it.

Don’t Be a Slacktivist!

Feel strongly about something? Isn’t it worth more than three minutes of your time? If so, get off your butt and do something about it. You can make a difference, but only if you really try.

Deep Thoughts advice, Internet, opinion, politics, slacktivism, spam

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And why this ruins things for the rest of us.

This morning, I got a junk e-mail message from a blogger I’d met on Twitter. And I’m pissed off about it.

How I Was Violated and What I Did about It

I followed this guy on Twitter for a short time and wound up on his blog, where I posted a comment. As anyone who comments on blogs knows, an e-mail address is required to comment, so I entered mine, as I’ve been doing without problems (or spam) for the past five or so years.

This blogger, however, was different. He evidently harvests the e-mail addresses from blog comments and uses it to feed his self-promotional e-mail list. The spam e-mail message from him arrived this morning when I collected my e-mail.

To say I was furious is an understatement. In my opinion, this blogger has violated my trust — and likely the trust of all other commenters on his blog. He’s used my e-mail address without my permission in a way that’s unacceptable. He’s a spammer, pure and simple, and should be subject to the same penalties as any other spammer.

(As if anyone’s actually enforcing the new anti-spam laws.)

Here’s the message he sent; I XXXed out the identifying information so I don’t send any customers his way:

Did you enjoy the free video on the 6 ways to make money on the internet?

How would you like to win the entire XXX System absolutely free?

All you have to do is recommend the system to a friend via a twitter to enter.

We will be giving away 20 full XXX system accounts between now and January 20th.

Click here to enter!

XXX Media Group | XXX | Lincoln, NE 68516 | US
Unsubscribe from future marketing messages from XXX Media Group

Call me an idiot, but I clicked the unsubscribe link. (They say that doing that often just confirms your address and spreads it.) The link sent me to the Bronto Web site, which is evidently the software this jerk uses to send his spam. It supposedly unsubscribed me. But it went a step further — it offered a complaint link. So I clicked that and filled out the form.

I also forwarded the message to spam@uce.gov, which is something I’ll be doing with ALL spam I receive from now on.

Then I went to Twitter and reported the jerk as a spammer there.

Why This Hurts Legitimate Bloggers

I’ve been blogging since October 2003. That’s six years now. My blog has accumulated thousands of comments from readers. All of them entered what looks like legitimate e-mail addresses. Are they? I don’t know. Other than a few notable exceptions when I wanted to network with a specific person — Miraz Jordan, who wound up co-authoring a book with me, comes to mind — I haven’t tried using them.

I don’t spam my commenters. I appreciate their input; they make my blog better. Why would I violate their trust and start spamming them via e-mail? Why would I make them less likely to contribute their comments to my blog?

So you can get an idea of how annoyed I am about this asshole.

Imagine a first-time commenter who happens to comment on this jerk’s blog. He feels good about adding to the conversation and is ready to do it again elsewhere. But then he gets spam from this jerk. He realizes that putting his e-mail address out there on the Internet can get him all kinds of spam. So he doesn’t do it. Maybe he starts putting fake e-mail addresses in his comments — making him impossible to contact if the blogger wants to for a legitimate, non-spam reason. Or maybe he simply stops commenting at all.

All because one jerk is harvesting commenter e-mail for spam purposes.

What You Can Do about It

The best thing anyone can do about spam is to report it to the authorities.

If you receive spam on Twitter, use the Report For Spam link on the user’s profile page. Do it every time you receive Twitter spam.

If you receive e-mail spam, forward it to spam@uce.gov. You can also visit the FTC’s Spam Site to learn more about how you can reduce the amount of spam you get. And while you’re surfing out on Government sites, visit OnGuard Online for real information about how to protect yourself and your computer from Internet fraud.

But whatever you do, don’t stop commenting on blogs. Most bloggers appreciate your contributions and won’t betray your trust.

Social Networking blogging, comments, e-mail, spam, Twitter

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It’s getting completely out of control.

This afternoon, I received @ replies from three different Twitter users who do not follow me, all of which contained spammy content. All three messages were obviously automatically generated based on a key word I’d included in a tweet:

• Spammer 1 invited me to a “Free Procrastination Seminar” after I used the word procrastination in a tweet.
• Spammer 2 pointed me and a Twitter friend to a site that sells face masks after I suggested that my friend wear a face mask when cleaning out a dusty hay barn.
• Spammer 3 pointed me and a Twitter friend to a site that sells MacBook Pro batteries after my friend and I had a Twitter exchange about his MBP battery.

It’s bad enough that everyone and his uncle is trying to use Twitter to promote themselves and their businesses. But now they’ve set up empty Twitter accounts and are using automated tools to send out Tweets that promote their products or services based on key word matches. That means they could be sending out hundreds or thousands of advertising tweets per day, clogging up your Twitter timeline with their crap.

I, for one, am sick of it.

There are two things you can do to help stop Twitter spam:

• Follow @spam on Twitter. This is a special account monitored by the folks at Twitter. Once you follow @spam, it will follow you back. You can then send direct messages to @spam when you want to report a spammer. For example, you might compose a message like this:
  

  d spam @spamguy123 is sending me unsolicited advertisements.

  The folks at Twitter investigate legitimate spam complaints. In addition, @spam sends out periodic tweets about using Twitter safely, so you might pick up a few useful tips.

• Block spammers. If you get followed by a spammer or received an @reply with spammy content, take a moment to block that Twitter user. The folks at Twitter take blocking into consideration when evaluating spam reports and account activity.

You can learn more about reporting Spam to Twitter here.

Please don’t just ignore the spammers. Do something to stop them. Only if we all act can we get a better handle on the situation. The folks at Twitter hate spam even more than we do. It clogs their bandwidth and stretches the resources of their servers. If we help them identify spammers, they’ll help us by suspending their accounts.

Spread the word.

October 16 Update: A new Twitter feature makes it quicker and easier to report spam. Learn more about it here.

Call Me a Geek, Social Networking spam, Twitter

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A new kind of spam makes me wonder how stupid spammers think we are.

To post a comment on any of my blog-based sites, you need to jump three hurdles:

1. You need to get past Bad Behavior, a spam prevention solution that can identify bots. If Bad Behavior thinks the a page is being accessed by a spam bot, it simply does not allow that bot to comment. Does this work? Well, during the past 7 days, Bad Behavior has blocked 2,018 access attempts. Does that mean it has stopped all the bots? Sadly, it doesn’t. But it seems to do a pretty good job.
2. You need to get past Akismet, the WordPress-provided spam filtering tool. Akismet takes the incoming comments that get past Bad Behavior and evaluate them to determine whether they might be spam. If it thinks a comment is spam, it gets put in a spam “bucket” (my term). Does this work? Well, in March it caught 3,830 spam comments, missed only 11 that I flagged as spam, and incorrectly marked only 3 good comments as spam that I rescued. It has caught a total of 54,048 spam comments since October 2008 — that’s just six months.
3. You need to get past me. I read all the comments that Akismet approves and either approve them for posting on the site or mark them as spam that Akismet missed. In certain rare instances, I’ll delete a comment that might not be spam but is, in my opinion, inappropriate for the site. (You can read my comment policy, if you’re interested.) I also briefly review what Akismet has flagged as spam and occasionally rescue a non-spam comment from the spam bucket so it appears on the site.

If you’re not a blogger, you probably don’t realize how big a problem comment spam is. Simply said, if I didn’t have Bad Behavior to block the bots and Akismet to filter out spam comments, this blog would attract anywhere from 10 to 1000 spam comments in a day. Spam comment contents range from links to sites selling drugs or offering online gambling to simple attempts to get some “Google Juice” from links to specific sites. Some of it contains crude and offensive words and ideas. If I let it get by me and allowed it to be posted on my sites, it would likely offend most of my readers.

But lately, I’ve begun getting a new kind of spam: beggar spam. The content of the message goes something like this:

I do not believe I get only one chance in life. I am from Guinea so my English is bad. Please give.

WTF?

Of course, this kind of comment never makes it to my blog. It’s stopped dead by Akismet or me. After a while, Akismet will pick up the pattern that identifies it as spam and properly filter each beggar spam message into the spam bucket.

But the real question is this: do these spammers really expect blog readers — or bloggers, for that matter — to send money to some faceless beggar just because they asked for it? Does anyone actually send them money to give them the idea this ploy works?

Which brings up another thought: The Internet has made it so easy for people to try to suck money out of people that they’ll try anything, no matter how unlikely it is to work. Just get yourself an automated commenting bot, set its options to include the message and link you want, and let it go. Sixty seconds of effort and an Internet connection can flood the world’s blog (and spam filters) with millions of scam attempts. If even one of them is successful, the spammer is ahead of the game.

I wonder how much of the world’s Internet bandwidth is used by but spammers and con artists. I’m not just talking about comment spam here. I’m talking about e-mail from Nigerian princes and widows. I’m talking about responses to For Sale items on online services, where the buyer offers a certified check for more than the purchase amount and asks you to give the difference to his shipping agent. Or the people who e-mail legitimate companies, offering to pay more for services than advertised, with the difference going to a “logistics” agent.

I see how many of these things cross my path in a day or week or month. I’m just one relatively well-connected person. What of the people who are better connected than me? Or the ones that foolishly put their e-mail addresses, unencoded, on a Web site so the spam bots can scrape them up for sale to spammers? Or the ones with blogs at the top of Google’s page rank that get thousands of visitors a day?

How much of the Internet is wasted on fraud and spammy self-promotion?

Anyway, I’d love to get feedback from other bloggers or people experienced with spam. What’s the most ridiculous spam you’ve ever received? The one that made you think the spammer thinks everyone is a gullible fool? Use the Comments link or form for this post.

And don’t try to spam me, please. Your comment will never appear on this site.

On Blogging blogging, comments, Google, scam, spam, WordPress

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And Twitter is being destroyed by the people who think it is.

The other day, there was an update in my tweet stream from MrTweet. It said:

New Posting: Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity (Why you should be a generous Twitterer, and how to!) http://bit.ly/Ni5tb

MrTweet is the Twitter account name for an online service that supposedly helps you find Twitter users who are like you. I joined up a while back, interested in adding a few people that I might connect with to the list of people I follow. I don’t know what MrTweet’s algorithms are like, but it didn’t come up with any matches. Still, there were few incoming tweets on that account, so I kept following it. That’s how I received the above tweet.

I followed the link. The blog post that appeared, “Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity,” included the author’s opinion of Twitter: “People may not like it, but Twitter is as old-fashioned a popularity game as high school is…”

WTF?

Is that what people think? Or, more likely, is that what people have turned Twitter into?

The post went on to provide tips for increasing the number of people who follow you, prefaced with this word of warning:

This isn’t a magic “popularity” ingredient, nor can I ensure you’ll get followers by the droves if you take my advice. This IS however, a philosophical theory that can bring you benefits if you understand it and are able to take advantage of it in your self-promotional efforts.

Among the pieces of advice were to reciprocate follows. That means if someone follows you, you should automatically follow back. It doesn’t matter who the person is, where he’s from, what he tweets, what his motives are, or how well you could possibly connect with him. Just follow him blindly.

This advice made me sick. It’s this attitude that’s turning Twitter into a meaningless waste of bandwidth, full of self-promotional links and blatant advertising.

Not long afterward, I caught wind of a new site called TweepMe. This is a pure piece of automated trash with just one goal in mind for the user: increase follower count. Here’s how it works: you sign up, providing both your Twitter user ID and password. You’re automatically followed by everyone else who signed up and you automatically follow all of them. So if TweepMe has 1,000 members, you automatically have 1000 followers. Ready for the punchline? The service is free to start out. Afterwards, you pay for your membership (and new followers).

Holy f*cking cow! What moron is so desperate for followers that he’d pay to get them? Oh, yeah. These morons.

Has everyone forgotten the original purpose of Twitter? It’s a social networking site, a way to connect with people you know. It’s “microblogging.”

If you’re a Twitter member, log out of your account on Twitter and go to http://www.twitter.com/. Here’s what you’ll find right on the Home page, under “What is Twitter?”:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I don’t see anything in there about selfishly eating up bandwidth to create hundreds or thousands of meaningless connections to strangers whose only interest is to do the same.

Tell me something: are these thousands of strangers you’re collecting as followers your “friends, family, and co-workers”? Are they likely to ever fit into any of those categories? Do you even care about them?

Why the hell are you “collecting” them, like a kid collects pretty rocks at the beach?

Have you read Jennifer Leggio’s excellent post on ZDNet, “I am popular on Twitter. Here’s why this means nothing.“? She echoes my sentiments exactly.

While I’ve been watching the growth, use, and misuse of Twitter for some time now, the childishness of follower collectors has only been a source of amusement for me. Until now.

The increase in demand on Twitter’s systems and bandwidth may be causing service outages. While that was bad enough as Twitter went through its growing pains, it truly sucks if it’s caused by what one Twitter user, @pageoneresults, refers to as a “Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus.” While I don’t usually link to SEO sites (I don’t believe in messing with Google search results), Edward Lewis’s blog post, “TweepMe Twitter Application,” is more than just an angry rant. It provides a wealth of information about what TweepMe is, how it works, how it can be compared to trojans and viruses, and how the idiots who initially signed on can make a clean break with it. He also opines about TweepMe’s possible role in recent Twitter outages:

There appears to be a bit more with this TweepMe application that many have overlooked. The thing is growing exponentially. It is a Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus. If it continues at its current rate, it may even hamper the performance of the Twitter pipelines. Whale Watchers are claiming that TweepMe is behind the recent Fail Whale sightings on Twitter although none of us can be sure of that.

Personally, I’m saddened by what is happening to Twitter. Since becoming an active Twitter user two years ago, I’ve always thought of my Twitter friends as “water cooler buddies.” I work in a home-based office and spend most of my days alone. Having the 100 people I follow in the Twitterrific window on my computer’s desktop gives me the social interaction I need during the day to keep my sanity. While some of these people are friends — including folks I was very close to 20 or more years ago! — others are people I met through Twitter. I’ve made good, solid connections with quite a few of them. I’ve met several of them in person and can now consider them real friends.

To me, that’s what social networking is all about. Twitter makes it easy. It enhances my life.

So you can imagine my anger and frustration when I see blog posts and Web services created with the sole purpose of increasing follower count, wasting bandwidth, and undermining Twitter’s original purpose and goals.

Deep Thoughts, Social Networking Internet, spam, Twitter

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