You’re wrong. Spam appears in your stream due to @ mentions of your Twitter user name. It has nothing to do with if you follow someone or not. That’s why there’s this nifty thing called “mentions.” It lets people who do not follow you communicate with you. It’s kinda the social part of social media.

Thanks!

Erika

At the top you write, “Spammers are anything but “social” in nature and often push services of a dubious nature. They appear in my Twitter stream uninvited with their non-topical, keyword search-generated auto Tweets and they piss me off to no end.”

Why would anyone’s tweets piss you off — why you even see them — unless you follow them?

It’s one thing to block accounts from following you, but it’s a different issue if you’re doing the following.