Twitter’s porn dilemma

Twitter needs to do something about its porn problem, said Sarah Lacy in BusinessWeek. It’s far too easy for “call girls, strippers, and purveyors of porn” to spam Twitter "newbies”—especially the older, more shock-prone users fueling its growth—and too hard to report spam. People who would never use Facebook or MySpace, like my mother-in-law, are “testing the Twitter waters.” But they’ll leave if it “becomes more about T&A than tweets.”

Yes, Twitter serves up “a plethora of tweets from people advertising that they’re looking to have sex. With you. Now,” said Amelia McDonell-Parry in The Frisky. But where else can these “hot and horny” businesses go now that Craigslist is “actively policing the Casual Encounters ads”?

Right, and these “slags and hags” are part of Twitter’s growth spurt, too, said Andrew Belonsky in Gawker’s Valleywag. So here’s a hint for you easily offended Twitter newbies: If it’s too hard to figure out how to “block the site’s cabal of sluts,” simply don’t "follow" people you don’t know, “especially if they have whorish names like ‘Kiki’ or ‘Cocoa.’”

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Deleting or blocking “porn and other raw sewage” is a good start toward building a useful Twitter network, said Jeff Cerny in Tech Republic. But it’s also a good idea to avoid anyone direct-marketing you with any product, or asking you to “Follow me,” or sending out URLs with no explanation. Twitter can be valuable, if you can separate the wheat from the chaff.