Media Calls Twitter ‘Dying Social Media Platform as Humans Flee’

Twitter’s traffic has been plummeting since the launch of Threads according to Vice, but they say that what has been increasing on the platform is the number of bizarre spam accounts hawking questionable wares.

Since anyone can now buy a checkmark, these spammers have been doing that and advertising overpriced decorative items and household items. The same words appear on hundreds of sites and they seem to be run by the same company.

They then link to very similar online websites that all have weird names like “Zono” and “Bumboo”.

Since Twitter gives priority to paid accounts, these spammy websites get priority and many show up as promoted.

The product mix is kind of weird. T-shirts, apparel and odd stuff like folding umbrellas and sprinklers for dogs. The graphics on the websites were stolen from other websites with the logos from those sites cropped out.

These spammers don’t actually have any inventory; they get an order and then dropship the orders to the customer. Since the prices are significantly jacked up from the sites they are buying from, the business is quite profitable – especially since they don’t need any warehouse, staff, shipping costs, etc.

A Twitter user named Storescams started tracking these spam sites since 2019. His list grew to over 1,200 different accounts. As Vice published their article, magically, Twitter started killing these accounts. No doubt, a coincidence. Hundreds of these accounts do remain, however.

Another collection of accounts was spotted recently that seem to target Japanese and Korean language audiences.

Many of the websites seem to be built from the same template and the About Us pages are the same except for the site name.

A large number of these sites appear to be run by Trendytowns Pte Ltd from Singapore. It is reportedly one of the top two advertisers on Twitter after a lot of mainstream brands left the platform.

Trendytowns does have a US address, but it is a private home. That is strangely blurred out on Google Street View. Some of the sites list offices in London, Denver and other locations – where they don’t seem to actually exist.

Hopefully Twitter gets their arms around this soon.

Credit: Vice

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