I like the idea, except maybe it could be modified so that it would not punish new accounts. If someone is blocked by the very first person who sees their them, they would go to jail before they could even get subscribers. Maybe there could be a probationary period for new users so that they wouldn't immediately be put in the jail. Or there could be a minimum number of hides before they are jailed - Thomas B

That's why I said "x" because it shouldn't be one. - Robert Scoble

I like the jail argument. - Cem Catikkas

For what it's worth, I created a room tonight to list FF spammers (http://friendfeed.com/rooms...). I only have 2 in there right now, but I figure as people add more it gives us a central place to go through and just block them as they pop up. It would be fantastic if FF took care of the spammers on their own but for now I think this will hopefully help. - Robert DeBord

This further illustrates the problem with Friendfeed Rooms. Just like Facebook has way too many "kinda similar" groups, which results in overlapping groups trying to do the same thing. http://friendfeed.com/rooms... Part of the reason why I haven't been really using the FF rooms feature very much. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

See, what happens if you get bunch of spammer accounts that blocks bunch of legit posts? What is that called? Reverse spamming? - Cem Catikkas

@Cem I think it's called a false positive (like if a CAPTCHA prevents a legitimate user from doing something) - Thomas B

@Cem: I think there would have to be a human element involved, like an appeal process. Also, if I could expand on Robert's algorithm: 'Jail' = 'x'% of blocks and/or 'y' > Followers, 'Y' could be points for identical posts or excessive hyper-links. - Johnny

I must admit, I am afraid of the spam that will show here eventually - Stewart Rogers

It's not going to take long for the Twitter spammers to figure out FF exists - I've had a load there the last 2 weeks from people spamming about the6figureteam.com. - Sally Church

The way twitter spammers can be identified is via their following/followed ratio and the rate at which they follow people. I saw one today that was following 500 people in every 4 minutes. Perhaps a similar metric could be used here? - Mr. Gunn

YEAH ROBERT!!! great idea!! jackass jail... fantastic! - Susan Beebe

so what will the user say ? "I'm jailbreaking the FF jail ?" - Peter Dawson

So where's the march onto Facebook for exposing such negative emotions in the first place? Amnesty or Attica! - Roney Smith