State of Twitter Spam

If you look “spam” up in the dictionary, you’ll find two definitions. There’s the “canned meat” and then there’s the “unwanted email.” At Twitter, we see spamming as a variety of different behaviors that range from insidious to annoying. Posting harmful links to phishing or malware sites, repeatedly posting duplicate tweets, and aggressively following and un-following accounts to attract attention are just a few examples of spam on Twitter. Like it or not, as the system becomes more popular, more and more spammers will try to do their thing. We’re constantly battling against spam to improve the Twitter experience and we’re happy to report that it’s working.

Percentage of spammy tweets posted per day is way down.

While the battle will never be over, we’re doing well on the front lines. Advertising Age recently profiled our Trust and Safety team noting the strong progress we’ve made keeping Twitter light on spam. With help from engineers on our Research team like @wfarner, we’ve moved the percentage of spam flowing through the Twitter network way down—and counting. To help us battle spam, you can click the “report for spam” link on any suspicious profile page. This action alerts us about the account and blocks the account from following or replying to you. If you like, you can also send a tweet to @spam. For more information, read How To Report Spam on Twitter.