I’ve been on Periscope for over two months now, and one thing I’ve noticed is the rampant abuse in the form of spam accounts. Periscope spammers. Sometimes, they are advertising a traditional product. More often, the accounts are blatant and obvious links to porn sites.
I’ve blogged on this before, and it needs action from Twitter. (They own Periscope now.) I get three to five new spam followers a day, and constantly blocking them is tedious to say the least. The problem needs to be addressed.
In my business account (@novytechcopy), I have nearly as many blocked accounts as I have followers. It’s come to the point I am skeptical at anyone who has a large number of followers, wondering how many of them are low-quality spam followers.
My author account (@ricknovy) reached 100 quality followers today. I define a quality follower as an account that isn’t spam. I know mine are quality followers because I purge the spam accounts regularly from my follower list.
Twitter purges problem accounts regularly; I don’t know whether there are plans to transfer that policy to Periscope, but it should be. The problem is eventually going to cost Periscope users. For now, the best way to handle Periscope spammers is to regularly block them. It’s tedious, but right now, there isn’t another answer. And that’s a shame.