Fresh on the heels of a spam report that painted Twitter as the network with the largest underground economy for the buying and selling of fake followers, the social network has finally taken steps to crack down on one of the tools often used by those attempting to game its service: the Auto Follow. In Twitter’s parlance, an auto follow refers to an immediate and programmatic means of following another user back after they follow you.

There’s an argument to be made on both sides of this issue.

Auto-Following Tied To Spam, Attempts To “Game” The Service

On the one hand, a portion of Twitter’s user base took advantage of auto-following in order to rapidly, and therefore inauthentically, raise their profile and their seeming popularity on Twitter in order to give themselves an air of trustworthiness they would otherwise lack. There are a number of places where you can find lists…