A Twitter advertising technique is perturbing people. Promoted brands like MasterCard and IFC are appearing in the list of accounts some users follow, even if they don’t actually follow them.
Sources familiar with the company’s advertising strategy tell me this has been occurring since early 2013, but the public has only just now cottoned onto it thanks to actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame). Shatner brought attention to it after he saw that “MasterCard” appeared in his following list despite the fact that he didn’t follow it.
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Brands Pay Twitter to Falsely Appear in Your Following List
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday January 01 2015, @07:28AM
Neither I, nor anyone I know, nor anyone I would want to know, has a twitter account. So how could this possibly affect me, or any sane person? No doubt, it will affect the idiots over at Politico and elsewhere, who seem to think that twits amount to something. Hint: they do not.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 01 2015, @08:26AM
I find it interesting to follow a short list of people (Glenn Greenwald and a few other random people). I've learned a few things that I might not have been made aware of.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 01 2015, @08:26AM
Oh nuts -- I meant to add:
Nice Find Cap't!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01 2015, @06:31PM
> Neither I, nor anyone I know, nor anyone I would want to know, has a twitter account.
What's really ironic about your post is that in making it you've revealed yourself to be just as shallow and narcissistic as the "idiots" you are putting down.
> So how could this possibly affect me, or any sane person?
I think you were right to exclude yourself from the group of sane people.
(Score: 2) by bryan on Friday January 02 2015, @03:18AM
Neither I, nor anyone I know, nor anyone I would want to know, has a twitter account.
SoylentNews has a twitter account [twitter.com].
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 02 2015, @03:23AM
Arrgh!!!! Is no place safe? SN, I thought I knew you!
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 02 2015, @09:06AM
This [theonion.com] is you, isn't it?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by Anonoob on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:36AM
probably a public service to let twits know next time their card system has failed.
(Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:59AM
.... in an ever increasing long list of reasons to utterly ignore Twitter as the toxic shitheap it is. In a ocean of sewerage that is social media, Twitter truly stands out as the single worst waste of disk and database space of them all, with utterly no redeeming feature.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01 2015, @05:34PM
Twitter is simply a tool. The company and the product called "Twitter" do not generate the sewerage, users do. Like most things in a world where people have the right to express themselves freely, Twitter is the product of humanity in its raw, unfiltered form. What the panegyrists of Humanity and Democracy and Equality gloss over is just how ugly people, in the aggregate, really are. Democracies end up electing tyrants, civilizations laud the smearing of feces on objects as high art, and the first generation truly to have at its fingertips the entire sum of human knowledge, readily searchable via Google, spends its time "favoriting" and resending 140 character slogans and indulging its kitten fetish: these things happen not because of conspiracies or corporations or any imaginary "other," but because humanity is by definition vulgar (from the Latin for the teeming masses of humanity).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday January 02 2015, @03:32AM
Some environments encourage human mind sewage. Twitter and Facebook are two examples.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday January 02 2015, @09:52AM
So all that bullshitting for nearly a paragraph simply ends with the exact same conclusion that the other poster had, that Twitter IS nothing but raw sewage, all your post does is quibble over the semantics of who took the biggest dump in the pipe.
I would only add the 140 character limit seems almost tailor made for slogans and narcissism. Anything worth saying can be said better and with more depth in a blog, while tons of worthless dribble seems to fit just perfectly into the "Tweetin' twits takin social shits" [penny-arcade.com] meme.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:23PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Thursday January 01 2015, @10:43PM
Really? Twitter has redeeming features? I'm calling bullshit. And following the minute brain burps of someone isnt a redeeming feature.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday January 02 2015, @05:40AM
And following the minute brain burps of someone isnt a redeeming feature.
So... you're unaware of what it does and hate it anyway. Okie doke.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday January 01 2015, @10:18AM
We need -1 Rant for some of the above comments.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 01 2015, @11:08AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01 2015, @11:40AM
GTFO
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 01 2015, @02:03PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday January 02 2015, @03:34AM
Catch some companies publish and interact only via these cesspools.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday January 02 2015, @09:22AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:30AM
Second catch, they are best in town and enough spyzombies keep their bottom line running.
(Score: 1) by Mr. Slippery on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:29PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01 2015, @09:58PM
And yet, as click170 in that thread pointed out, it is so completely believable that Twitter would do it on purpose.
After all, Shatner isn't paying twitter to use their systems, he wouldn't work for free (really, he still charges a couple of thousand even for one day of voice acting on an educational project, I know this because my ex-wife was the casting director for one such movie). So he shouldn't expect Twitter to just give him all those resources without expecting something significant in return.