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"@" on Twitter

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Re: "@" on Twitter

#71

Post by smelendez »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #20

Slightly related but very interesting: the 2010 Twitter bug where simply tweeting "Accept [username]" would automatically force them to follow you. My understanding is that for the sake of simpler interfaces such as SMS, which they let hold the whole service back for a long long time, they had a "follow [username]" feature - and if the person had to approve follow requests, it would send one to them. To accept the re…

Facebook had this bug as far as accepting group requests very early on, maybe around 2010. Early enough that groups were limited to your college.

I wrote a script to accept invitations to every group ID from 1 to 10000. It even added me to groups that didn't exist yet, presumably just adding my ID and the group ID to a table. So when someone created a group to rant about me being in all their groups, I was in it and, as the first member, an admin.

Facebook fixed the bug when I reported it and first kicked me out of my legitimate groups, then fixed that too, though they didn't pay bounties then.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#72

Post by Gigablah »

computerfriend wrote: post #51
Gigablah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because nobody could conceivably impersonate a business and cause all sorts of legal and PR issues.

Just like nobody could impersonate a person?

That's already a given. We are all, in a way, impersonating other (mostly insufferable) persons.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#73

Post by emmelaich »

In the very early days of Google, searching for $@ or $* or some other shell-sensitive character combos produced strange results.

I never did push it to the point of security exploitation.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#74

Post by tempodox »

So, did the devs programming the username field forget to sanitize text input, or were they just working without a spec? Neither scenario would be particularly surprising.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#75

Post by Buge »

warent wrote: post #29

Is product quality degrading on the internet over time? It used to be that once a week or longer I would find some amusing bug. But now it's not uncommon for that I encounter dozens of bugs daily on various popular services that are worth $millions or $billions, which is just obnoxious. Not only that, but usually the services have no way of filing a bug report or getting in touch with support. It seems like internet…

You probably do more on the internet now. Both spending more time, and also using services that have more functionality. The more functionality there is, the more surface area there is for bugs to sneak in.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#76

Post by ubernostrum »

icebraining wrote: post #70
chrfrasco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python doesn’t do any implicit coercion (apart from ints and floats etc), right?

Well, booleans are integers, so you can do: >>> True + 1 2

That's not "coercion", though. That's Python obeying the LSP, because bool is a subclass of int.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#78

Post by wpietri »

Gigablah wrote: post #44
CommieBobDole wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, when Google Plus was new and people were excited about it, a whole bunch of companies flocked to the site to set up accounts for their businesses. But Google hadn't launched the "business account" functionality yet, so they banned them all. I guess Google Plus and Friendster are good examples of how that mindset works out.

Because nobody could conceivably impersonate a business and cause all sorts of legal and PR issues.

That is in the category of "nice problem to have".

Friendster definitely doesn't have that problem, because despite being a pioneering social network, one that existed before MySpace or Facebook, it is now defunct.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#79

Post by wpietri »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #43
wpietri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked somebody who used to work there, and the answer I got was that there are a bunch of accounts from back before validation was as tight as it is now. Which seems reasonable to me. At-replies were not something that Twitter started with, but instead were community-driven with software support added later: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2008/how-replies-w... It's a good reminder that it's always easier…

If I recall correctly, when Google Plus was new and people were excited about it, a whole bunch of companies flocked to the site to set up accounts for their businesses. But Google hadn't launched the "business account" functionality yet, so they banned them all. I guess Google Plus and Friendster are good examples of how that mindset works out.

Exactly. Shouting, "YOU USERS ARE DOING IT WRONG" rarely accomplishes anything, and misunderstands how business works. The goal isn't to make users do what you imagined they would. It's to find something valuable you can do for users.

Re: "@" on Twitter

#80

Post by make3 »

paultopia wrote: post #65
dghughes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern twist to that seems to be little miss Infinity https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/8f57i1/psa_ther...

Now I want to change my name to NaN

you probably don't, if the story about the cars with plates on a variations of "NO PLATE" is any indication https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/licensed-to-bill/
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