The problem with free services like Twitter is that they’re made available — without limitations — free to spammers as well. Spammers who have products to sell, paid to spam in order to promote a product, or are simply there to annoy the hell out of every legit users.
Marco explains Twitter can put in place a system that either can be aggressive or passive against these spammers and how they respond to spam reports by users. And he suggests, and I do believe, Twitter most likely is taking the latter approach.
We don’t know the algorithm used by Twitter in order to tag an account permanently as spam. But let’s say it’ll take 100 user reports before the team actually takes action. Not all users, SADLY, (and they can even amount to a lot!) are even proactive in reporting those spammers.
The result — the “Report for Spam” function doesn’t seem to exist as we, the active and legitimate users, are always bombarded by spam.
I quote Marco’s conclusion:
In the meantime, I’m never using the “Report Spam” feature again, because it just seems like I’m wasting my time.
In order for the many to enjoy a spam-free service, we all should cooperate in reporting those spammers. And Twitter could do some more intensive work against those useless scumbags.