

Ask HN:  Twitter's list feature a ploy to increase usage by risking reputations? - amichail

What prevents someone from creating a throwaway account, then creating a "losers" list say, and then adding a bunch of people to it?<p>Some of these people may eventually notice that they are on this "losers" list and block the person in question.  But by then the damage to their reputation may have been done.<p>A better implementation would give you the option of approving each request to put you on a list.  Moreover, if the list is renamed, then you would need to give your approval again.<p>If you are cynical, you might think this list implementation is a ploy to get you to check your twitter account frequently.
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ashchristopher
"give you the option of approving each request to put you on a list" -- uh, I
see a huge issue with this. Can you imagine being one of the more popular
twitter users being inundated list requests all the time? Also, being on a
spammers 'losers' list probably isn't going to do that much damage to your
reputation.

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amichail
If it's an option, then there's no problem. It would benefit most people as
they are not on many lists.

Damage to your reputation is greater when you are on fewer lists. So this is
an important issue for most users.

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tialys
What does it matter if some anonymous internet person thinks you're a loser? I
don't care what lists I'm on -- in fact I'd imagine people would love to
increase they're 'list count' just like their follower count.

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iterationx
The list feature seems to be about crowdsourcing the categorization of the
users. Someone can put me in the list programmers. I suppose they have some
quick filter options.

