Is it true that you can't tweet "Get Better."?

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9543/is-it-true-that-you-cant-tweet-get-better-because-its-something-dorseys-fa

by ivoflipse • 14 years ago

211 56 14 years ago

skeptics.stackexchange.com

cfinke• 14 years ago

It's most likely because "get [username]" is the Twitter SMS command to retrieve a list of tweets from [username]: https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020# I would wager a guess that you can't tweet "Fav Better" or "Stats Better" either.

treetrouble5• 14 years ago

"Get" is the 48th most commonly used word in US English. This seems like excusably poor engineering not to prefix commands with a character like $. Granted, I'm not a Twitter user so maybe there's a reason?

courtewing• 14 years ago

Being the 48th most commonly used word in US English is a little misleading in this case, though. Verbs such as "get", common as they are, are rarely used to begin a thought.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

Forcing the typing a command character on a ten-digit phone pad might have caused enough friction to have put Twitter on a very different trajectory early on. Given how long Twitter has had this feature and how little issue it's caused, I would argue it was good product design.

nhebb• 14 years ago

> https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020#

When I saw that I thought, "Wait, there's actually a manual for this thing?". Of course there is, but I wonder how many people have actually read it. <1%?

ChuckMcM3• 14 years ago

Confirmed. And 'please get better' works fine.

That being said perhaps people should use g3t better :-).

It is an interesting case study on overloading a channel (in-band administration vs out-of-band) and damaging legitimate traffic. A fix would be to prefix the command keys with an introducer :get <username> or :fav <user> but given the bazillion clients and such doing that would be hard.

Most famous in-band admin hack has to be the +++ syntax for Hayes modems which flipped the mode bit into 'command' mode serial comms mode. It was even patented.

praptak• 14 years ago

> Most famous in-band admin hack has to be the +++ syntax for Hayes modems which flipped the mode bit into 'command' mode serial comms mode.

Unlike this case the +++ hack did not really limit legitimate data you could send on Hayes. As far as I remember it had to be preceded and followed by pauses, so transmitting this comment wouldn't trigger it.

blueskittle• 14 years ago

Oh to be this guy: https://twitter.com/#!/better

darkstalker• 14 years ago

If I don't have twitter SMS enabled, it shouldn't parse SMS commands. It should parse only when sent from the "txt" application (that's how twitter SMS is called)

__alexs• 14 years ago

Seems likely to be related to the Twitter in-band signalling thing that caused the accept bug back in 2010.

http://gizmodo.com/5535536/the-real-story-behind-twitters-ri...

Peroni• 14 years ago

It appears the obvious answer may be correct:

The reason that certain tweet content appears to do nothing is that Twitter is interpreting them as commands, according to this article:

https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020

The get command will send the latest tweet from the named user to your phone. I've tried some of the other commands listed in that article, and they don't post a tweet. They do, however, have the listed effect. For example, fav accountname does indeed mark the most recent tweet from accountname as a favourite.

It's perhaps useful to remember that'd accountname Some message here will send a direct message to accountname, even if entered in the public tweet box or via another client. This shows that they have a standard text to action parser that works on tweets as they are submitted.

So, to answer your question: No, it's not down to Jack Dorsey's father. It's purely because Twitter is interpreting it as a command. Sorry!

achughes• 14 years ago

It seems to me like this could potentially be used as an exploit.

bri3d• 14 years ago

It was, back in 2010: http://gizmodo.com/5535536/the-real-story-behind-twitters-ri... .

aangjie• 14 years ago

Wonder if they have a escape character in that text-action parser?

genezeta• 14 years ago

Sure https://twitter.com/VenkyLeFou/status/205361434039816194

loftwyr• 14 years ago

It seems odd to me that they would have the same command filter on the web client as the SMS handler. What possible reason would you have for that?

Wouldn't it just be smart to have the web client bypass the command handler altogether?

pepdek• 14 years ago

Heaven forbid they make the mobile/SMS UX the same as the web client.

gwy• 14 years ago

But keeping the same UX is harmful in this situation -- on SMS it's a common pattern to use text commands, but in the desktop context you'd never expect it (and the commands don't make sense).

ageektrapped• 14 years ago

I found this to be true with the term 'M$', specifically with the '$'. I didn't think that term was still a thing, and then I came across it in an email. I wanted to note my surprise on twitter, making a ridiculous comparison that I shall not repeat here, but the tweet would NOT go through. Change the '$' to 'S' and everything is cool.

Angostura• 14 years ago

Little Bobby Tables strikes again, potentially?

gee_totes• 14 years ago

I find the explanation posted in the question more fascinating than the actual answer:

while in High School, Dorsey's father used to spur him to work harder with that exact sentence.

For me, this implies that the creator of Twitter hated his father's trademark phrase, and by extension his father's demands to work harder, so much that Dorsey would explicitly put a ban on the phrase to spite his father.

This follows humanity's tradition of creating myths to explain things we don't understand[0], but it's exciting to see the mystery phenomena revealed as something created entirely by man.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(mythology)

BHSPitMonkey• 14 years ago

Any tweet beginning with "get" yields the same result. It's being interpreted as an API command.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

"..it's perhaps useful to remember that d accountname Some message here will send a direct message to accountname, even if entered in the public tweet box or via another client"

d, and and dm as well.

capkutay• 14 years ago

Also...when I try to tweet "; DROP TABLE;" it cleared all my friends tweets!

pndmnm• 14 years ago

Relatedly, there was an in-channel-command bug in Twitter in 2010 that would allow you to force anyone to follow you by tweeting "accept [username]". It was discovered accidentally by a fan of a band named "Accept" tweeting "accept pwnz": http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/twitocalypse-heavy-metal/

septerr• 14 years ago

Hmm. If I (septerr) did RT septerr, will that start an infinite loop?

pseale• 14 years ago

Related: you can't create filenames in DOS reserved by devices.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_can%27t_you_create_a_folder_na...

voxx• 14 years ago

Whoa, I was not expecting a discussion about grammer. Damn I love HN.

jsharpe• 14 years ago

I didn't seem to have any trouble posting "get better":

https://twitter.com/jeremysharpe/status/205522693821448193

;)

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

SMS is probably the root of quite a few Twitter restrictions, not just this one.

For instance, the length of a tweet. I think it's 140 characters so they can fit it in an SMS message along with the username or command.

Is it true that you can't tweet "Get Better."?

Related Stories