Is it courteous to block somebody at Twitter?

I asked this question many time a couple of day back, when I saw a couple of my followers, who I too was following (as a courteous approach in a social network, you do that) started spamming me with their tweets.

What are the rules of a social networking site like that of Twitter? Are there some basic guidelines of courteous behavior? What should be your approach towards people who have no regards to you?

Social Networks like that of Facebook and Twitter have their very specific guidelines. They say that they would not tolerate spam and spamming. They also say that every individual joining the network has to have the minimum courtesy to at least respect the privacy of the other person. But how far are these guidelines and rule followed? Are Twitter and such other networks monitoring the behavior of their users?

Indeed, Twitter is monitoring the behavior. I have seen quite a few account getting blocked because of such spamming and Twitter has been very strict at it. But with the surge in the users of Twitter in the past couple of months, when Twitters servers could not bear the load, wouldn’t it be unrealistic to expect Twitter to continually play Police to such behaviors?

It is for this reason that such social networks give you the option of “Blocking” and “Reporting” people. As a good citizen of such network sites we are expected to act wisely by blocking such spammers and reporting about them to the sites. But we are so engrossed in our activities that we forget the basic expectations from us and tend to then complain about the lack of restrictions at such sites.

It is indeed, “COURTEOUS” to block a spammer or, a person who does not know how to respect the rules.

All it takes is to press one button named “BLOCK”. Do it whenever required.

Photograph courtesy Oddball27