“We would all get less benefit from Google if it included only sites in their index that conformed to a bunch of upfront criteria, instead of relying on ex-post filtering and user behavior to identify spam. This is not to say that the latter is easy. Much work remains to be done for Google and Twitter (and everybody else), but I believe the long term results will be better.”
— Upfront Hurdles Vs. Ex-Post Filtering (Facebook, Twitter) - I love the filter after approach as a UX person, but my developer side despises how hard it is to do well. Even the simpler things like cleaning up the broken multibyte unicode are a nightmare. It’s worth it though, for a squishy more malleable system.
