ExTwitter Misclassifies Your Spam Reports So It Doesn’t Have To Take Down Spammers
from the everything’s-going-just-great dept
Elon Musk keeps insisting that stopping spam bots is a huge priority. After all, he said he’d either stop them or die trying.

And, apparently one way to try to stop spam is to stop allowing people to report spam. I’m guessing this is just a mistake on a site that has massive errors pretty much every day, but it’s still crazy. Apparently, exTwitter no longer lets you actually report spam. If you try, it automatically misclassifies it as something else, and then you get a notice that because it’s not that something else, it remains online.
Spam problems solved!
I first spotted this over on Bluesky from user Q.H. Stone, who noted that if you now try to report spam on ExTwitter, rather than saying “we received your report for spam,” it instead says (incorrectly) “we received your report for sensitive media.”

Then, one of the three remaining trust & safety hamsters on the wheel looks at the spam, looks at the report, and says “this isn’t sensitive media,” so nothing to do here:

While I hid the user account in this case, I will note that (of course) it is paying for Twitter Blue, Twitter Verified, Verified, X Premium, so perhaps that’s why it’s not getting removed for spam. But, rest assured, all that account is doing is spamming people with crypto spam. But, apparently, it’s okay, because it’s not “sensitive media.”
Filed Under: content moderation, elon musk, reporting, spam, trust & safety
Companies: twitter, x
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Comments on “ExTwitter Misclassifies Your Spam Reports So It Doesn’t Have To Take Down Spammers”
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So what?
Just another piece of Musk/Twitter hate by MM.
Re:
No, its another example of how people like Musk and you fuck up the world for everybody else.
Re: Re:
Looks like somebody hasn’t discovered object permanence yet because they believe if somebody doesn’t report on something it will somehow magically cease to exist. There are three year olds with more advanced cognitive skills than yours.
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Please oh please describe how pointing out that elmo doesn’t let you report spam anymore is hate of the idiot?
Re: Re:
You’re right, it’s not hate of people with severe intellectual disabilities because Musk’s IQ is believed to be 155.
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Oh look, another tongue gets removed from Elon’s ass temporarily just so it can send the same unoriginal, juvenile, child’s remark that every same sender thinks is so very clever. Yawn, fucking yawn.
Every long thread now ...
Every long Xitter thread I’ve seen recently included easily identifiable spam from blue-checked accounts, each with THOUSANDS of likes.
At this point, it appears there are more bots/spammers on Xitter than real humans.
Re:
It will come full circle.
Humans are no longer necessary; it will become an engine to suck money from hopeful advertisers. Briefly.
Unfortunately, ‘lonnie fired the hunter bots that twitter used to have that went after spam [bots].
Can you report the reply-bot for disinformation?
Haha, j/k. They don’t care about that, either.
These aren’t the bots you’re looking for, move along.
Try another report type
Have you tried reporting it as “Sensitive media”? Maybe they just swapped the two categories. Maybe we should try all the categories to find out which is now which…
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Is there more proof of this happening than just one dude on Bluesky saying it happened?
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Re:
I guess the silence is my answer.
Re: Re:
You could read That Anonymous Coward below. Or you could realize that one report used for example doesn’t mean it was the only report. i’m sure ppl are talking about it on Xitter, so you could look. Or you could wait a month or so for statistics. Your call.
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Oh, there was a LOT of corroboration. And well, what was just posted as screen shots. Of course, you could actually try it yourself and see. If you are on Twitter now. (And yes, I’m not gonna say X.)
Either/or
They haven’t defeated the spam bots, maybe they should try the other thing.
So, you report spam on X… and that reports sensitive media on “Twitter” (blue bird).
Is that the product of a smartest genius of earth gifted by the hand of God to have absolute knowledge, or am I too confused to understand anything at all?
I guess that I’m, just like him, become too desperate to make sense of anything of with X thing. (Maybe he rebrand it “⌦” and move on).
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I report spam on X nearly every day. It works fine. And guess what? You’re still not getting back the left-wing viewpoint-based censorship that Twitter once provided for you.
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what are you talking about
Re: Re:
It’s his drugs talking.
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If you’re going to claim that this is user error, then be useful and point out how to get the desired result.
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Re: Re:
I reported spam just now. I got a “like” from a fake woman, as usual. I used the “…” menu to “Report xxx”, got a popup window asking for a reason, I selected spam, submitted, hit “Done” on the next window, and got a notification that X has received my report. It’s no different today than any other day.
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Re: Re: Re:
Watch out – MM and his minions won’t like your narrative. Expect your comment to be hidden soon!
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Re: Re: Re:2
You two seriously need to get a room together, preferably one that’s made in Germany, and has showers built into the ceiling.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Disgusting, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-cheering comment from someone who’s no doubt a Hamas supporter. Here for your viewing horror on MM’s TD.
Re: Re: Re:4
I hate to break it to you, but nobody cares if you Musk fanboys are intolerated. Nazi humor is literally your bread and butter. If you don’t like it being used on you, maybe ask Elon to thoughtfuck you better.
Re: Re: Re:2
Oh look, another somebody who doesn’t understand logic, yawn.
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So did I… the “Does the reported content target people because of their identity” in the response to the report, didn’t give me much confidence that it was being treated as -spam- .
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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Oh fuck off Hyman.
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How can we get back what we never had in the first place? If anything there was the former management to catered to right wingers and excused behavior by them that got got others kicked off, until it became -too extreme to to continue to look the other way-
'You can't kick them out, they're my biggest customers!'
Perhaps Elon has figured out that if he gets rid of spammers he’s also getting rid of the people most likely to be dumb enough(or canny enough given what it’s getting them) to give him money?
Hurm… someone finally woke up.
I’ve been on a spambot reporting spree (mainly because its no longer like 7 steps to report them) & was shocked to get the notice that they got my report.
I called out support and space karen about it was spam not sensitive media, made a comment about perhaps testing things on dev not prod.
Report
·
October 18, 2023
You submitted a report
View Rule <– link to ALL the rules, not the one I selected in reporting… because that would make sense.
Olivia
@Olivia1429172
What’s next
Our team and technology will review your report. If we find a rule violation, we’ll let you know what actions we’re taking.
What’s our process?
Context matters. We consider the following factors when enforcing our rules (this isn’t a complete list):
Creating duplicate reports will not accelerate our process.
heh
https://twitter.com/That_AC/status/1713123029968900216
.@elonmusk
Mr. Musk, it is bad most of my engagement is spam bots liking my tweets, but when I report them for spam & your system says we got your report for sensitive media it doesn’t really seem worth reporting them any more.
Maybe stop making changes on prod till you test?
https://twitter.com/That_AC/status/1713088106381898173
.@Support
“We received your report for sensitive media”
I reported the accounts for SPAM.
The endless stream of accounts trying to lure users to websites to find “true love” or hotter pics.
SPAM, not sensitive media.
I clearly hit the button for spam so WTFM8??
I expected more from Elon, especially after he ignored my plea for help b/c an account was trying to sell me drugs.
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sigh…
got an email from twitter informing me the follow up to my report.
(one of many)
Some how my spam report got them to look at the images & put content warnings on them, and here are tips if you don’t want to see naughty pictures.
https://twitter.com/That_AC/status/1715838675311854048
I might just go back to blocking until I can’t block any more accounts.
But that makes you a spammer
But by repeatedly forwarding the same content, you’ll be flagged as a spammer and booted from the platform.
You can’t win for trying!
Equivalent medical rule
There’s a “law” in medicine (from Samuel Shem’s House of God): “If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever.” Meaning that if you don’t look too hard you won’t find extra work for yourself. It would appear that Musk has read the book.
And that law is the 10th of the 13 laws, or in roman numerals, Law X. Possibly a coincidence. But then again, maybe not.
Self regulation is going great!