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Years ago I wrote a bot to correct people's poor grammar (specifically "I could care less"), stayed within the API limits, and clearly labeled the account as a

Years ago I wrote a bot to correct people's poor grammar (specifically "I could care less"), stayed within the API limits, and clearly labeled the account as a bot. Banned by Twitter within a week. Their policies have always been arbitrary and selective, and this kind of vague language ensures that will continue.

strbean 7y ago
That's a semantic error, not a grammar error!
- dllthomas 7y ago
  I stopped being annoyed by it when I decided it was short for "I could care less, I guess, but only if I tried realllly hard."
  - strbean 7y ago
    Oh hi there!
    - dllthomas 7y ago
      o/
moeffju 7y ago
That is pretty spammy and, frankly, obnoxious. Not only is language constantly evolving, chances are that people didn't actually ask to be corrected (using commonly used and understood language), much less by a bot?
- tyre 7y ago
  > chances are that people didn't actually ask to be corrected If you remove the tweets that are something the parent tweet didn't ask for comment on, there would be nothing left.
  - andrewzah 7y ago
    There’s a difference between not asking for a reply, and not asking for corrections for your grammar. Correcting native speakers when they didn’t ask is obnoxious. Particularly from an automated bot.
- baggachipz 7y ago
  I freely admit I did it mostly for the lulz, but the whole point of twitter is that people are shouting into the ether. Hardly anyone "asks" for responses from other accounts. My account has as much right to post and reply as theirs did.
  - bluntfang 7y ago
    and your account has as much right to be banned as any other. It's clear that twitter does not want bots like that on their platform.
andrewzah 7y ago
I’m glad it got banned, frankly. Those sorts of bots on Reddit are extremely spammy and annoying. Being a “grammar nazi” used to be a thing on Reddit and I’m glad it died out.
- baggachipz 7y ago
  It violated no rules, and was all in good fun. All it did was reply with "Are you sure you couldn't care less?"
  - fhoffa 7y ago
    Replies are considered a spammy way of getting attention. This wasn't Twitter arbitrarily banning you, but people repeatedly reporting your tweets. The option is right there, and aptly called "Uses the reply function to spam".
  - kazinator 7y ago
    It probably did that even if you wrote a comment saying something like: "I could not care less" is a malapropism we should strive to avoid.
  - nl 7y ago
    I'm glad it got banned too - bot replies are the worst. And since it's nit-picking, it's worth noting that the "could/couldn't care less" thing isn't at all as clear-cut as you are making out. In the early 1990s, the well-known Harvard professor and language writer Stephen Pinker argued that the way most people say “could care less”—the way they emphasize the words—implies they are being ironic or sarcastic along the lines of the Yiddish phrases like “I should be so lucky!” which typically means the speaker doesn’t really expect to be so lucky. Michael Quinion of the wonderful World Wide Words website makes the same argument. and Both Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com have weighed in and say “could care less” and “couldn’t care less” mean the same thing. Their reasoning is that both phrases are informal, English is often illogical, and people use the two phrases in the same way. “Could care less” has come to mean the same thing as “couldn’t care less.” https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-care-less-versus-couldnt-care-less https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-ca...
qweqweewqewq 7y ago
Yeah, that sounds horribly obnoxious. Glad it was banned.
jachee 7y ago
Meanwhile, as a correlation of their caprice, my @fiveobot is still going strong after tweeting hourly for going-on-three years.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
stevula 7y ago
The issue of correctness in this case is not so simple: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.h...
kdamica 7y ago
I wrote a similar one to correct people's misspellings of the word 'definite'. It got banned quickly, but it's clear why. Unsolicited @ mentions are against the API terms. Was fun while it lasted but definitely deserved the ban.
leggomylibro 7y ago
Haha, right? I remember writing my first bot on reddit; it was named after Obama, and it made rate-limited "You're welcome!" comments to all of those "Thanks, Obama" eyerolls during his first term. Someone else quickly made a bot to thank it whenever it commented, and they got along very well. I thought it was hilarious at the time. But it only lasted about a day. Come on, who makes these rules? :P Good times, when you come to remember them...and now that I do, that was also the first time I spun up an AWS instance. These sorts of fun and games are good for learning, but I do understand why platforms dislike them, especially once they go mainstream.

strbean 7y ago

That's a semantic error, not a grammar error!

dllthomas 7y ago
I stopped being annoyed by it when I decided it was short for "I could care less, I guess, but only if I tried realllly hard."
- strbean 7y ago
  Oh hi there!
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    o/

moeffju 7y ago

That is pretty spammy and, frankly, obnoxious. Not only is language constantly evolving, chances are that people didn't actually ask to be corrected (using commonly used and understood language), much less by a bot?

tyre 7y ago
> chances are that people didn't actually ask to be corrected If you remove the tweets that are something the parent tweet didn't ask for comment on, there would be nothing left.
- andrewzah 7y ago
  There’s a difference between not asking for a reply, and not asking for corrections for your grammar. Correcting native speakers when they didn’t ask is obnoxious. Particularly from an automated bot.
baggachipz 7y ago
I freely admit I did it mostly for the lulz, but the whole point of twitter is that people are shouting into the ether. Hardly anyone "asks" for responses from other accounts. My account has as much right to post and reply as theirs did.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  and your account has as much right to be banned as any other. It's clear that twitter does not want bots like that on their platform.

andrewzah 7y ago

I’m glad it got banned, frankly. Those sorts of bots on Reddit are extremely spammy and annoying. Being a “grammar nazi” used to be a thing on Reddit and I’m glad it died out.

baggachipz 7y ago
It violated no rules, and was all in good fun. All it did was reply with "Are you sure you couldn't care less?"
- fhoffa 7y ago
  Replies are considered a spammy way of getting attention. This wasn't Twitter arbitrarily banning you, but people repeatedly reporting your tweets. The option is right there, and aptly called "Uses the reply function to spam".
- kazinator 7y ago
  It probably did that even if you wrote a comment saying something like: "I could not care less" is a malapropism we should strive to avoid.
- nl 7y ago
  I'm glad it got banned too - bot replies are the worst. And since it's nit-picking, it's worth noting that the "could/couldn't care less" thing isn't at all as clear-cut as you are making out. In the early 1990s, the well-known Harvard professor and language writer Stephen Pinker argued that the way most people say “could care less”—the way they emphasize the words—implies they are being ironic or sarcastic along the lines of the Yiddish phrases like “I should be so lucky!” which typically means the speaker doesn’t really expect to be so lucky. Michael Quinion of the wonderful World Wide Words website makes the same argument. and Both Merriam-Webster and dictionary.com have weighed in and say “could care less” and “couldn’t care less” mean the same thing. Their reasoning is that both phrases are informal, English is often illogical, and people use the two phrases in the same way. “Could care less” has come to mean the same thing as “couldn’t care less.” https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-care-less-versus-couldnt-care-less https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/could-ca...

qweqweewqewq 7y ago

Yeah, that sounds horribly obnoxious. Glad it was banned.

jachee 7y ago

Meanwhile, as a correlation of their caprice, my @fiveobot is still going strong after tweeting hourly for going-on-three years.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

stevula 7y ago

The issue of correctness in this case is not so simple: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001201.h...

kdamica 7y ago

I wrote a similar one to correct people's misspellings of the word 'definite'. It got banned quickly, but it's clear why. Unsolicited @ mentions are against the API terms. Was fun while it lasted but definitely deserved the ban.

leggomylibro 7y ago

Haha, right? I remember writing my first bot on reddit; it was named after Obama, and it made rate-limited "You're welcome!" comments to all of those "Thanks, Obama" eyerolls during his first term. Someone else quickly made a bot to thank it whenever it commented, and they got along very well. I thought it was hilarious at the time. But it only lasted about a day. Come on, who makes these rules? :P Good times, when you come to remember them...and now that I do, that was also the first time I spun up an AWS instance. These sorts of fun and games are good for learning, but I do understand why platforms dislike them, especially once they go mainstream.