William Shatner Is Pissed At Twitter For Their Newest Marketing Strategy

…and honestly, it should piss you off, too.

If it wasn’t annoying enough that Twitter has the “Promoted Tweets” format — effectively putting ads in your feed — they are now apparently using a practice called “Promoted Accounts,” designed to jam unwanted users in your “Following” list, even if you’re not following them.

Shatner was putting together his year-end tribute to the people he follows on Twitter, and while going over his account details, he noticed that Mastercard had asserted itself in to the mix. He was rightly annoyed that the appearance of extra Twitter accounts, particularly those associated with large corporations, could give people the wrong impression about him.

The effect was obvious when Shatner checked out Dwayne Johnson’s account (@TheRock), who is only actually following one person (Muhammad Ali), but the Mastercard account was also showing up. It was pointed out by his followers that the “promoted” Tweeters appearing in these lists weren’t people you’re actually following, and there’s a difference in the icon used to show that next to the user name. (The icon is white with a plus sign, the universal social network symbol for “PLEASE LIKE ME.” A following icon is blue with a check mark.)

It’s fairly misleading for companies you don’t necessarily support to be listed among your “friends.” Later on his Tumblr, Shatner explains:

To indiscriminately add a follower to my list where I may have ethical, moral or business objections to them is wrong on all levels. […] It’s not only promoted corporations that have been included in my list; individuals are being added as well. This morning I discovered an individual with the Twitter nickname which includes “Ganja” (another name for Marijuana if you didn’t know.) That’s not acceptable to me to have this occur on my followers list as it could hurt my income and my reputation. […] I, like a host of other well knowns and peers, am very careful about endorsements and the abuse by Twitter of this does not sit well with me.

Blocking an unwanted promoted account will just slot another promoted account in to that space, solving none of the problems in the first place.

And of course the algorithm that drives this stuff isn’t discriminatory. It’ll put Mastercard, for instance, in to everyone‘s followers list. Even a competitor’s:

After tweeting about this for about three hours Tuesday morning, Shatner signed off with this:

It’s not exactly a rage quit. He was back twelve hours later to tweet a link to his Tumblr post updating people to the situation. Then he continued to use Twitter to promote his own interests, including his Kickstarter. Which is of course why we have Twitters in the first place.

As he signed off his Tumblr post, he stated he will not be doing his year-end Twitter followers thing after all. Thanks a lot, marketing robots.

Via Mediaite / Jon Nicosia