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back to article Followers vanish as Twitter tw*ts tweet bug

Twitter has squashed a bug that allowed users to force any other Twittering netizen into "following" them on its popular micro-blogging service, and in doing so, its engineers temporarily removed follower lists, leaving countless people feeling extremely unpopular. It seems the bug was originally noticed by a Turkish blog …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    huh?

    can someone translate this in English? thanks.

    Any why is this news? how is tw*tter getting rid of people claiming "big lists" and people realising that no one is actually following the inanity and minutia of their lives actually important.

    sorry never got the concept of it and prolly never will.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      English

      I really hope your use of English was a deliberate joke on the horrific crap that twitter posts - but I'm honestly not sure. Was it?

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Abandonment Issues

    After maybe 5 minutes there where a number of trending topics along the lines of "Following 0" and "Zero Followers", with most of the people I know asking the same thing, "What the hell is going on?".

    I didn't panic, I knew exactly what went wrong. Someone had dropped a bollock at Twitter command. It was funny whilst it lasted, with possibly thousands or people panicking they they had been hacked or said something offensive. I was tempted on sending a few tweets along the lines of "How could you say that. No wonder no-ones following you." as a joke, until I realised not everyone would appreciate that bit of humour.

    Ah well, wasted opportunity.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Moral goes here

    The point is that Twitter's so-called "engineers" don't know what they're doing. They have built-in massive loopholes into the system, but forgotten where they are.

    Wanna bet your business, or marketing campaign, on Twitter being smart? Or would you rather bet some Russian teenager can find the bugs faster than the doozies can rub them out.

    I know where my money is going.

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    1. Tim Spence
      Reply Icon

      Bug?

      Quite - this sounds less like a bug to me, and more of a long-forgotten feature, or early development debug tool. Wonder how many more there are....

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    2. bothwell
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      know where your money goes

      If a company is spending money on using a free service tehn something, somewhere, has gone badly wrong, non?

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    3. Anonymous Coward
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      Flame

      Its Ironic

      Considering how Twitter-tards were saying how "sysadmins" were going to have to get with the program or lose their job only last week....

      Dear Tw*t,er - you obviously have no clue and seriously need some good sysadmins. Stop insulting them.

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  4. heyrick Silver badge
    WTF?

    WTF?

    "'Following: 0 Followers: 0' dat is wat i saw 5mins ago::::i jumpd up nd i realise twitter is fixin' a problem dats y....!!"

    Such eloquence, eh? What language is that anyway? Redneck? Elmer Fudd?

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    1. Gangsta
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      language

      I believe its 12 Year Old child

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      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        12 ? Nonsense !

        When my daughter was 12 she could type in English better than that - and English isn't even her mother tongue !

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    This is proof positive

    That Twitter is only for Twits.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Headmaster

      RE: This is proof positive

      You made a small spelling mistake there.

      The word you're looking for is *like* "twits" but it has an "a" in it.

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  6. Kanhef

    Not a bug

    Bypassing the approval system is a feature for testers. Of course, any good programmer can tell you that such things should always be removed before the final build. That was clearly not done in this case, and could have been (ab)used for years. Yet another failure of security by obscurity.

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  7. Rob Moir
    FAIL

    hrmph

    Those sample twats you posted remind me of why I don't bother with twatter. Thank you!

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  8. Code Monkey

    Semi-literate nonsense

    "'Following: 0 Followers: 0' dat is wat i saw 5mins ago::::i jumpd up nd i realise twitter is fixin' a problem dats y....!!"

    Generally I'd blame the user rather than the platform but the 140 character limit really does encourage semi-literate nonsense like this.

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  9. Reg Varney

    It's not the 140 chars, it's the 40 IQ

    Follow the link to the Twatterer in question. I don't think it's Twattle itself that is the problem

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  10. Reg Varney

    If a twatterer has 0 Followers ...

    ... do they still exist? How would they know?

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