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Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

August 23, 2009

Twitter’s Block-Unblock Bug: Force Followers to Unfollow You…

During the past few months, we have noticed a couple of bugs/issues with the popular real-time micro-blogging platform, Twitter. You can learn how to post a tweet longer than 140 characters, or how Twitter has been losing users’ tweets during the past few weeks. Today, I noticed a new bug – I’m not the first to do so, but it’s still worth talking about - it’s the block/unblock bug.

There is a new Twitter “gambling” game called Bet Your Followers that exploits this bug. Their elevator pitch is that “Bet Your Followers is a Twitter game that lets you gamble your followers as currency“, and the block/unblock bug is one of the reasons this game was possible to create in the first place.  The part where they force users to follow you if you “win” still puzzles me, though – if it works of course.

What is it & how to do it?

Twitter's Block-Unblock Bug

Twitter's Block-Unblock Bug

I have a few annoying followers that I keep filtering out every time I try following back all those who follow me. So every time around, I have to keep an eye out for those users and make sure I do not follow them back by mistake. At the same time, I do not want to negatively affect these users’ accounts by blocking them indefinitely. At the end of the day, this maybe how Twitter determines and terminates spam accounts.  The Twitter issue I’m referring to as the Block/Unblock bug simply eliminates this problem by forcing this follower to unfollow you without the need to hack their account to unfollow yourself ;). This is done by simply blocking and unblocking the user.

To do it yourself, just do the following:

  1. Go to the Twitter profile page of the user that you’d like to force to unfollow you. This should be like http://twitter.com/annoyinguser
  2. Locate the “block @annoyinguser” link and hit it. Now neither you nor @annoyinguser follow one another.
  3. Unblock him now using the same link on his profile page – unless he’s a spammer of course!
  4. That’s it – his “following” count just dropped one!

Final thoughts…

It’s not the first time I hear about bugs, security issues and unexpected downtime of platforms around the Web. So, should we trust Twitter and Facebook (…etc) with our data and the protection of our privacy? Is it a mistake?

Filed under: Hacks and Workarounds — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 2:38 pm
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  • Facebook
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  • StumbleUpon
  • Sphinn
  • Slashdot
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Mixx
  • Ping.fm
  • FriendFeed
  • BlinkList
  • Technorati
  • HackerNews
  • email

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  2. Follower Trafficking: Would You Sell Your Twitter Followers – Discreetly?
  3. Tweepi Gets New Features: Manage Your Twitter Followers with Stats
  4. Username: @xadultfinder – Action: Unfollow! More Twitter Tips…
  5. How To: 5 Top Methods & Applications to Reduce Twitter Spam!
Amer Kawar: Founder of ThoughtPick, a 2009 start-up "aiming to make the Internet a smoother surf". Based on a profound interest in information and technology, Amer was able to nourish this interest through studying at the University of Liverpool and graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering followed by a Masters degree in Computer Network Security.
  • DebbyBruck
    This is the first I am hearing of this problem. I usually just block a person and that's it. I don't go back and unblock them.
  • Name
    Hrm. Isn't there a "force-unfollow" option, though? If you go to your follower list, one of the options is to "remove (insert username here)." I thought that forced the person to unfollow you?
  • Forget it being a twitter bug - it should be a feature.
    I mean if you can restrict follows by means of email only follows (pre-emptive)
    then why not post-emptive and have a force-unfollow button?
    why not?
  • There is this user @aswani who keeps on following/unfollowing me. I keep getting notification emails with multiple messages informing me that he is following me now! I have wondered what is wrong with him and thought of blocking him. I didn't realize that it may be a bug. I hope that my account doesn't behave the same with others. Is there anyway that I can find out?
  • Why do you call this a bug? I believe this the regular, documented behavior of both the Block function ("they can no longer follow you") and the Unblock function ("the account will function again as any other account").

    I use it to lose followers who are not really spammers, but whom I do still not feel very comfortable with, because it seems they only followed me to get attention for their own website. An example of these are the twitter accounts that automatically follow everyone that use a certain term in a tweet. Examples: "etsy" (used by a competitor of etsy.com), "South Africa" (used by a South African news site), "Fish tank" (used by a someone running a website on aquariums). Most annoying were Multilevel Marketing (MLM) people who auto-followed me after I tweeted "I hate Multilevel Marketing", just becaused I used the words "Multilevel marketing" in a tweet. I did block those.

    However, I agree with you that Twitter is still a bit buggy and shaky. They have good intentions, but are by large not as professional as, for example, Flickr.com, which is much better organized.
  • I'd rather just block them. If they're annoying me, they are probably annoying a lot of other people and likely exhibit behavior that is not part of accepted Twitter etiquette. Maybe getting terminated by Twitter will teach them a lesson in online manners?
  • Anon
    I don't see why this is causing you any trouble. If you chose to go public with your Twittering, then having the option to make anyone "unfollow" you makes little, if any, sense; those "annoying followers", as you wish to call them, can still follow your Tweets by simply bookmarking your twitter page (or by even entering your Twitter URL each time they feel like reading your Tweets and perhaps following you yet again). Besides, as you mention yourself, you have the choice of blocking them if they are spammers.
    On the other hand, if you chose _not_ to go public, Twitter provides the option to "Protect Your Tweets" which defeats your point altogether.
    I believe that Twitter chose the block/unblock method the same way Facebook conveniently tucked away a method to "unsend a friend request" (I am referring to the times you send a friend request and it annoyingly sits in that person's "Friend Requests" without a reply, in which case, you can block and then unblock that person to cancel that friend request).
    It is great to point out glitches and possible bugs in sites like Twitter, but you have to be careful not to bite off more than you can chew; I wouldn't have called this a bug, but rather, a "tucked away solution".
  • Bugs can sometimes be "tucked away solutions", too. Is the block function working in the way intended by design? If not, it's a bug and at the same time a feature.

    The problem forcing a user to unfollow you solves is to cleanup your followers list from porn advertisers and bots. This in turn makes reciprocating to those who follow you an easier job. Not that much of a deal, but it's good to know I have the option.

    Also, I never said that blocking a user solves a privacy problem, as you mentioned, that would simply not work – just think that the RSS feed of any user can be downloaded with no authentication.

    I didn't mean to step on any toes, the only question I'm asking is: If massive (and massively funded) platforms like Twitter & Facebook have unintentional bugs/solutions, is it wise to grant them the level of trust we do?
  • @beiruta .dependency is a state of mind.if we remain as we and media tools as media tools ,i think we can balance and stay in equlibirium
  • I think trusting social media tools and sites is not an option due to the great need we have for them these days... Losing tweets and other bugs might really bother us, but the fact remains that we are growing dependent on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.
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