3 ms·

Isn’t this a known feature of Twitter, usually called a soft block or forced unfollow? You block and unblock someone quickly and it forces them to unfollow you

Isn’t this a known feature of Twitter, usually called a soft block or forced unfollow? You block and unblock someone quickly and it forces them to unfollow you (and more importantly, does not signal them that it happened). I have heard of people fearing harassment to use this technique to get themselves out of a person’s timeline (out of sight, out of mind) without the pseudo-confrontation of a block.

iainmerrick 8y ago
Maybe... but known to whom? Is it documented?
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  I'm not sure about twitter, but my housemate was talking to me about how she would use this technique on Instagram to get people from unfollowing her. It's no longer required because you can do that explicitly now.
- x5315 8y ago
  https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/accounts-and-users/mute-block-report-users/api-reference/post-blocks-create https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/accounts-and-users/mut... "If a follow or friend relationship exists it is destroyed."
michaelmrose 8y ago
Isn't it weird that someone else controls this. It seems like a website removing itself from your bookmarks. Maybe twitter could instead work on not being a terrible way to communicate coherent thoughts to each other instead.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wafflesraccoon 8y ago
  I would argue that it is closer to being unfriended on Facebook than a website removing itself from your bookmarks.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Facebook is mostly info that is scoped to a defined set of people. It makes implicit sense to have your access to private information removed if you no longer qualify eg no longer a friend. Twitter is publishing data that is world visible and making it hard for individuals who have been snubbed to keep track of what everyone including them if they log out can in fact see by removing their bookmark to same. The behavior of toggling block is weirder yet because the data is world published, you can read it, you can follow it but someone else has reached out and toggled the state of your account in some weird spooky action at a distance fashion that works only because it confuses people. Well designed things work in a way that is predictable to users. Who would predict that your follow status on accounts would from the perspective of the user toggle itself randomly. It's even worse that twitter sees purpose built for short toxic exchanges too short and badly organized for anyone to get each others point where the standard protocol is to disengage from anyone who disagrees and shout at all the people who believe exactly as you do.
x5315 8y ago
This is correct. When we process a block request from user A -> user B, we remove the follow edges between user A -> user B and user B -> user A, and then add a block edge from user A -> user B. When we process an unblock request from user A -> user B, we remove the block edge from user A -> user B. I imagine that the "Aleksey checked that he was following me again" was either client caching, or eventual consistency latency. There's no nightly batch job or anything doing that. Source: I work on the social graph service at Twitter.
- mad44 8y ago
  After the test, I unblocked Aleksey, and this tweet includes the video where we saw that Aleksey could see my tweets in his timeline again. Something went wrong after that I guess. https://twitter.com/muratdemirbas/status/1062763863332937728 https://twitter.com/muratdemirbas/status/1062763863332937728
  - mad44 8y ago
    Yet, another update. It might be that since my tweet included a mention to him, Aleksey clicked on the notification and could see my tweets after that, and not in his timeline. We repeated the experiment, and found that after I blocked and unblocked him, he was indeed still unfollowing me.
    - x5315 8y ago
      Ah ok. :thumbsup: I described how the logic works above, but we're always subject to and victims of replication or cache-expiration latency. So it could have been that.
duskwuff 8y ago
This is also the only way to remove followers from a protected account.
pjc50 8y ago
For years there have been persistent rumours of an "unfollow bug", where X finds that they're not following Y and Y has no idea about why.
dredmorbius 8y ago
There's a similar mechanism on G+

iainmerrick 8y ago

Maybe... but known to whom? Is it documented?

madeofpalk 8y ago
I'm not sure about twitter, but my housemate was talking to me about how she would use this technique on Instagram to get people from unfollowing her. It's no longer required because you can do that explicitly now.
x5315 8y ago
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/accounts-and-users/mute-block-report-users/api-reference/post-blocks-create https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/accounts-and-users/mut... "If a follow or friend relationship exists it is destroyed."

michaelmrose 8y ago

Isn't it weird that someone else controls this. It seems like a website removing itself from your bookmarks. Maybe twitter could instead work on not being a terrible way to communicate coherent thoughts to each other instead.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wafflesraccoon 8y ago
I would argue that it is closer to being unfriended on Facebook than a website removing itself from your bookmarks.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Facebook is mostly info that is scoped to a defined set of people. It makes implicit sense to have your access to private information removed if you no longer qualify eg no longer a friend. Twitter is publishing data that is world visible and making it hard for individuals who have been snubbed to keep track of what everyone including them if they log out can in fact see by removing their bookmark to same. The behavior of toggling block is weirder yet because the data is world published, you can read it, you can follow it but someone else has reached out and toggled the state of your account in some weird spooky action at a distance fashion that works only because it confuses people. Well designed things work in a way that is predictable to users. Who would predict that your follow status on accounts would from the perspective of the user toggle itself randomly. It's even worse that twitter sees purpose built for short toxic exchanges too short and badly organized for anyone to get each others point where the standard protocol is to disengage from anyone who disagrees and shout at all the people who believe exactly as you do.

x5315 8y ago

This is correct. When we process a block request from user A -> user B, we remove the follow edges between user A -> user B and user B -> user A, and then add a block edge from user A -> user B. When we process an unblock request from user A -> user B, we remove the block edge from user A -> user B. I imagine that the "Aleksey checked that he was following me again" was either client caching, or eventual consistency latency. There's no nightly batch job or anything doing that. Source: I work on the social graph service at Twitter.

mad44 8y ago
After the test, I unblocked Aleksey, and this tweet includes the video where we saw that Aleksey could see my tweets in his timeline again. Something went wrong after that I guess. https://twitter.com/muratdemirbas/status/1062763863332937728 https://twitter.com/muratdemirbas/status/1062763863332937728
- mad44 8y ago
  Yet, another update. It might be that since my tweet included a mention to him, Aleksey clicked on the notification and could see my tweets after that, and not in his timeline. We repeated the experiment, and found that after I blocked and unblocked him, he was indeed still unfollowing me.
  - x5315 8y ago
    Ah ok. :thumbsup: I described how the logic works above, but we're always subject to and victims of replication or cache-expiration latency. So it could have been that.

duskwuff 8y ago

This is also the only way to remove followers from a protected account.

pjc50 8y ago

For years there have been persistent rumours of an "unfollow bug", where X finds that they're not following Y and Y has no idea about why.

dredmorbius 8y ago

There's a similar mechanism on G+