It’s been driving me up the wall lately — porn spam!
I manage the @ynot_cam Twitter account and, though I may occasionally wonder about the marketing strategies behind it, I literally don’t bat an eyelash at NSFW content on the feed. But fuck me if the porn bot spam has not gotten out. of. control!
At any given time lately, I can open Twitter and see all sorts of outright fucking overwhelming my feed. All with @ynot_cam tagged in the post. Like, stop it!
It’s gotten so annoying that I started blocking accounts about a week or so ago. At first I was hesitant. Like, even if it was tedious wading through all that junk, I didn’t want to inadvertently block content from other community members, and I definitely didn’t want to block a model or performer’s shares. Also, especially at first, I thought it might just be that specific account. Like, the YNOT Cam Twitter had gotten on some sort of shit list somehow. But then I started to notice grumbling from others. What the heck was going on?!
Engadget recently wrote that “Porn bots are now storming Twitter’s trending topics.” They stated:
Instagram isn’t the only social media app being invaded by porn bots. Now they’re on Twitter, too. For the past few days, as I was scrolling through Twitter’s trending section, I noticed a number of accounts showing similar behavior as the bots that have taken over Instagram comments. But, whereas on Instagram they’re leaving messages like “We gonna ignore the fact that I’ve GOT A HUGE BOOTY?” or “DON’T LOOK at my STORY, if you don’t want to M A S T U R B A T E !” on Twitter the spam also includes pictures of women in bikinis and a bunch of words relevant to topics currently trending on Twitter. And they’re even more brazen in their attempts to lure in gullible readers, with messages like “I moan very much during sex, if this does not scare you, call me on whatsapp.”
Twitter told Engadget that it’s working to ensure this type of spam doesn’t appear in search results or conversations. When they do miss something however, as they inevitably will, users do have the option to report and/or block the accounts.
All this spamming is certainly annoying, but — in my view — the most significantly negative aspect about these spam bots is the general public’s misperception about the content’s source(s).
For instance, “Jesus loving radical leaning feminist” @LailaMickelwait clearly feels that Big Porno is out to get her. She wrote: “The porn industry must be feeling threatened by us truth tellers. Other advocates I know are dealing with constant cyber attacks & wild premeditated personal attacks of the lowest order. I currently have about 50+ porn accounts spamming my comments every few minutes w/ porn videos.”
Though this harassment — and it is harassment — is not coming from within the industry, there’s nothing stopping the uninformed/misinformed public from believing that it is. These types of off-mark beliefs then may give rise to off-mark efforts in opposition of legitimate adult content on social media.
That is where this entire thing can go from annoying to a really big negative deal rather quickly.
Screengrabs by the author.
