
Is it true that you can't tweet "Get Better."? - ivoflipse
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9543/is-it-true-that-you-cant-tweet-get-better-because-its-something-dorseys-fa
======
cfinke
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.

~~~
treetrouble
"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?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
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.

~~~
treetrouble
good design implies that there's some advantage to its use

~~~
tedunangst
? I can use a simple command to request tweets on my dumb phone. How is that
not an advantage?

~~~
treetrouble
Is it not still simple with a single character prefix?

~~~
tedunangst
Depends on your userbase. Completely in band normal English command messages
probably fits many users' mental model.

------
Peroni
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!_

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

------
__alexs
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...](http://gizmodo.com/5535536/the-real-story-behind-twitters-ridiculous-
follow-bug)

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

~~~
gwy
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).

~~~
esrauch
I worked at Amazon and we found (to our surprise) that power users were using
these commands from the build in Kindle tweeting functionality.

I think the number of power users using this feature is probably actually
higher than the number of false positives of exactly 2 word tweets where the
first is get

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

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

;)

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

[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_can%27t_you_create_a_folder_na...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_can%27t_you_create_a_folder_named_CON_in_Windows_or_MS-
DOS)

------
pndmnm
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/>

------
Angostura
Little Bobby Tables strikes again, potentially?

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ageektrapped
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.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
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.

------
joezydeco
_"..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.

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

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

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

~~~
genezeta
Sure <https://twitter.com/VenkyLeFou/status/205361434039816194>

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

~~~
bri3d
It was, back in 2010: [http://gizmodo.com/5535536/the-real-story-behind-
twitters-ri...](http://gizmodo.com/5535536/the-real-story-behind-twitters-
ridiculous-follow-bug) .

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

