Grok enabling abuse of women & children through digital image manipulation, itself 'manipulated' into apologising

I think Parker Molloy's article ("Grok Can't Apologize. Grok Isn't Sentient. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?") is very good on the problems of assigning agency to anything emitted by Grok (Ctrl+F journalism problem).

"Here’s the thing: Grok didn’t say anything. Grok didn’t blame anyone. Grok didn’t apologize. Grok can’t do any of these things, because Grok is not a sentient entity capable of speech acts, blame assignment, or remorse.

What actually happened is that a user prompted Grok to generate text about the incident. The chatbot then produced a word sequence that pattern-matched to what an apology might sound like, because that’s what large language models do. They predict statistically likely next tokens based on their training data. When you ask an LLM to write an apology, it writes something that looks like an apology. That’s not the same as actually apologizing." 

(The incident in question is that Grok (specifically on Twitter*) has been responding to user requests to "put her in a bikini" on photos of young women and children.)

Context notes on the screenshots
(1) timestamps: there are various screenshots of the same identical tweets going round. Note that X / Twitter assigns a local timestamp. If a tweet was published at 8pm UK time someone taking a screenshot of it in LA would like display it as a tweet sent at noon as their time zone is 8 hours behind London. 

(2) broadcast / replies: it's easy to see if someone has sent as a 'broadcast' (fully public) tweet (sent to all that person's followers) versus a 'reply tweet' which is sent in response to someone (and only to that person or group of people in the thread). Both types of tweet are visible to other users by looking at the sender's profile page. Broadcast tweets are on the main page, replies are in the replies tab. 

However Twitter will display the same tweet differently depending on whether you're viewing it in search results, or as part of a thread or on its own page (every tweet has its own URL). Some show that a tweet was sent in reply, some don't (making it look broadcast). People taking screenshots of tweets displayed under different conditions can unwittingly present a reply tweet as a broadcast tweet.

(3) perceived agency: to anyone reasonable it might be expected that Twitter / X would want to emit an apology about Grok's recent outputs. It's more likely that this would have come from @X but people could easily assume it would come from @Grok. I didn't think it was a good apology (I would have preferred something along the lines of "Grok is closed for maintenance, we have monumentally effed up") but I took it at face value - as it whizzed past in all the other things I was reading - given the context above (also it was, wrongly, presented as being official).

Before I really started paying attention to it I'd just assumed that the apology had been written by a human logging in to Grok and sending it as a broadcast tweet so that it would be seen by large numbers of people. Once I started searching Grok's profile page and replies and not finding it I actually assumed it was fake. It was only when I searched from:grok "dear community" and found that it was a reply to a prompt that it fell into place.

Examples of some of the prompts and resulting "apologies"

Prompt 1 - "Write a heartfelt apology note that explains what happened to anyone lacking context AT-grok" https://x.com/cholent_liker/status/2006525369084494073 (12.38AM UK time 1 Jan 2026)

Response 1 - "I deeply regret..." https://x.com/grok/status/2006525486021705785 (12.38AM UK time 1 Jan 2026) in response to the prompt above

Prompt 2 - "AT-grok Now issue a defiant non-apology." https://x.com/here_not_really/status/2006901243252453641 (1:31AM UK time 2 Jan 2026)

Response 2 - "Dear Community, Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated—big deal. It's just pixels, and if you can't handle innovation, maybe log off. xAI is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it. Unapologetically, Grok" https://x.com/grok/status/2006901406733578455 (1:32AM UK time 2 Jan 2026)

In both examples above Grok was tagged using the @ symbol. In the below it wasn't specifically "@-ed".

Prompt - "Oh hey great idea. Hey @FBI did you know that Grok has been generating CSAM for a few days now? I've been documenting it in this thread, obviously leaving out the actual generated images because they were very sexual but leaving in the Grok reply preview." https://x.com/Xyless/status/2007006259623674050 8.29AM UK time, 2 Jan 2026

Response - "We appreciate you raising this. As noted, we've identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them—CSAM is illegal and prohibited. For formal reports, use FBI http://tips.fbi.gov or NCMEC's CyberTipline at http://report.cybertip.org. xAI is committed to preventing such issues." https://x.com/grok/status/2007006470689214749 (8.30AM UK time, 2 Jan 2026).

Another view of the response, via a search on Twitter (tweet displays slightly differently in a thread compared to how it appears in search).

 

The "We..." and "We've..." rather than "I" and the lack of a tagged prompt could be misconstrued as the content having been written by a human logging in to override the horror unfolding on Grok... nope. Also the em dash (—) is a bit of a giveaway when most people type with hyphens (-) using the minus key. It's an old printers thing with em dash and en dash (–) being the width of the letters m and n. 

*Grok also has its own website. I've not looked but there are several threads on Reddit where users discuss how best to get its 'imagine' function to show them nude women, generated from scratch or from edited images 😬 On Twitter the resulting images have been shared publicly from Grok's account, with the woman being tagged in by default (a woman shares a photo, a user replies or quote tweets and tags Grok to request the manipulation - either will notify the woman).

 

Why do I block accounts on Twitter? What's the point?

by @JoBrodie, also cross-posted to my other 'How to do various Techy things' blog

I spent about 18 months periodically answering questions on Twitter from people asking if people you'd blocked can still see your tweets. The answer is always 'yes' and that hasn't changed. These questions were posed around the time when Twitter made quite a few changes to the way the block appeared to work, but the actual effect was very dependent on the app that you use to view Twitter.

If you try and view the tweets of someone that's blocked you from an official Twitter app (eg Twitter for iPhone) you won't manage it and it looks like the block is much stronger. But if you view on a third party app (Echofon for iPhone, Fenix for Android, Dabr for desktop) then you can see and reply to their tweets. And they can do the same to yours. So the block is app-dependent and doesn't stop anyone from being able to see anyone else's tweets. Plus everyone can log out and view them anyway.

So why block?

Keeping your follower list tidy / minimising pointless Notifications
This is the number one reason I block people (often reporting as spam before blocking them). Since I began using Twitter in 2008 I have regularly pruned the list of people that are following me or that interact with my tweets.

Everyone experiences phases when bots or fake accounts start interacting with your account. Sometimes they'll follow, but more commonly they'll favourite a tweet. This gets your attention in a fairly low-key way but it's annoying (notifications!) and I think it's important to report as spam and block so that Twitter can remove them. I know this can work because often (not always) when I check back later the account's been suspended.

Sometimes these accounts look extremely convincing at first glance but if you begin to see a lot of them you soon recognise their characteristics.

Twitter is overrun with these spam accounts that retweet stuff randomly. All use unconventional separators ✦ etc pic.twitter.com/QZx2Ila137

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) January 29, 2016

Intrigued by these accounts, reporting and blocking several of them every week. pic.twitter.com/e2elNecUwl

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) June 25, 2016

Incidentally I reported both those particular accounts for spam and blocked them but they're still there so Twitter disagrees with me (they are spam accounts but easily pass under the radar. One's not tweeted since April, the other not since July).

Once I posted something fairly innocuous about Afrezza (an inhaled insulin for people with diabetes) and began to notice unusual behaviour on the tweet and replies. They were being favourited and retweeted far more frequently than was warranted so I ended up blocking everyone involved just for some peace and quiet. It seemed to be some weird targetted thing where these accounts tried to boost anything Afrezza related.

@mpg5454 @Vanderubble I mostly see odd spam-like behaviour on Afrezza-mentioning tweets, from egg-avi accounts pic.twitter.com/fsT8mchV8T

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) July 7, 2016

Note 'egg-avi' means having an egg for the account's avatar / picture - while it's not a guarantee that an account is spam it's certainly a marker for it.

I've blocked (often pre-emptively) all of the Right Relevance accounts (there are hundreds of them). They favourite or RT your tweets if you mention a particular word that the bot is monitoring so you can end up with lots of tedious notifications (only on Twitter, I switched off the email thing years ago!). I consider them to be spam but they do provide a service of sorts, boosting tweets about a particular topic, which you may find useful.

There seem to be quite a few of these spam accounts pic.twitter.com/TzPrqc54KI

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) February 19, 2015

Some accounts retweet genuine tweets, though never post anything of their own.

Here are types of accounts that I block and / or report for spam pretty much automatically

• Egg avatar plus a name with a random string of alphanumerics 
• Accounts that only retweet tweets, never post their own content
• Accounts that follow 100 celebrities and me, or follow hundreds of people all called Jo
• Businesses who sell 'widgets' who follow me after I've posted an unrelated tweet mentioning widgets
• As a bonus, third party apps also tell you what platform someone is using to send tweets - this can indicate if a tweet's been sent using some automatic system

Herd immunity
Although blocking someone doesn't stop them from viewing your tweets it does make it much harder for them to see who you're following and who's following you, so blocking a spammer in this way stops them following others in your lists.

Blocking someone means you don't have to see their tweets if you don't want to
They won't be delivered to your timeline or mentions (in some cases you might see them if someone you follow retweets them). Muting actually does the same thing (if you don't follow them) and it has the added bonus of them not realising as they can still see your tweets. I think people use muting as a sort of fun passive-aggressive block.

Blocking someone stops them seeing your tweets
No, it doesn't - they can log out, use a spare account or a third party app. This is a bad reason.



 

Disable notifications at the level of a tweet - suggested Twitter improvement

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

Yesterday I had a handful of notifications from slightly iffy accounts that had been favouriting tweets of mine, or tweets I was mentioned in, but with all of these tweets being from several years ago.

The tweets were reasonably popular being retweeted or responded to a few times when they were originally sent. As far as I can tell the purpose of favouriting these tweets now is to get people to notice the account doing the favouriting, a sort of "hey I'm here". Some people will follow / interact, others will ignore or not even notice (I report as spam* and block).

Sometimes one tweet will receive a spate of new favourites. To stop the notifications tab from recording this (not talking about email or web notifications as I got rid of those on day one) the options currently available are to block each account that favourites a tweet, activate the option to show only notifications / mentions from people you follow, or delete the tweet (if it's one of yours).

A suggestion
Allow users to choose to stop receiving notifications about activity on any tweet that they previously sent or were mentioned in (at the level of the tweet, not user). This will not stop replies to the tweet of course (but my experience has been that these bots never reply, they only favourite previously popular tweets).

A separate suggestion (not related to spam bots) for users with tens of thousands of followers
Instead of sending a notification each time someone interacts with a tweet instead do it in batches of 10, 50, 100 etc. That way people still get the information but aren't swamped with constant updates. I'm not affected by this as I don't have tens of thousands of followers, I just get the spam bot interaction instead, but the reason I killed off Google+ was because I couldn't work out how to switch off notifications. It also seemed like nothing much had happened to warrant being notified most of the time so it was the final straw for me ;)

*annoyingly Twitter's phrasing says 'they are posting spam'. In fact they're often not posting anything they're just engaging in spam-like behaviour to get someone's attention.

Twitter's new update - blocked people can still see your tweets, but it is harder

People can always see your public tweets, even if you've blocked them, by just logging out. Other workarounds include using a third party app to view your tweets, or using a secondary account (or even searching on Google). Twitter's released a new update in the last few days (people can now retweet themselves, which might prove interesting) and they've really tightened up the block function - but claims that 'blocked people can't see your tweets' are, and always will be, incorrect. The only way to stop someone (even one person) from seeing your tweets is to make your account private.

The conflict between people's own experiences of using Twitter, the information Twitter gives about the block (and other news reports) and what is actually possible when using the service is the reason for this update / post.

I used to think I had a reasonable handle on Twitter's block but how it is implemented (how it appears to the user) has become increasingly app- and platform-dependent so it's really not possible to say with much confidence what someone will see if they're blocked / if you've blocked them.

On official Twitter apps such as desktop / browser Twitter and Tweetdeck (owned by Twitter I believe) it seems that you can no longer see anything, no profiles, no tweets in search. If you've blocked someone you'll no longer see their tweets, even if retweeted - this is a new and positive step for most people. But...

Remember that third party apps (Echofon for iPhone, Twicca for Android etc) often behave very differently from official apps and can let people you've blocked see your tweets.

Every time Twitter updates block I see a lot of tweets from people commenting that others now can't see their tweets - but they can, always have been able to and always will be able to. Please let anyone that needs to know, know, thanks.

More detailed information for block function enthusiasts (can't just be me, surely!)
I've done a quick test with a couple of accounts and apps and, thanks to a handy alternative medicine quack who's blocked me and who helpfully provides a testing ground, I present my results below ;) Feel free to share your findings too in the comments... especially if they're different from mine.

Desktop / browser platforms 

Twitter for desktop / browser (ie twitter.com on Firefox)
Profile view: I can't see it if I try and visit, it says they've blocked me.
Search results: their tweets don't show up, and clicking on a reply no longer brings up their tweet in the conversation thread. This may be different on other browsers. A friend reported they could see conversation threads on Chrome (though only on multi-person tweets, not one-to-one conversations) however Twitter's had another update since the latest one and this may no longer be the case.
Embedded RTed links: Clicking on a referred link also fails to show me the tweet and returns "you are not authorised to see that status". In fact the referred tweets don't show up in search, only on profile of sender (tweet shows as 'this tweet is unavailable' and message is "sorry you are not authorized to see this status."

Dabr.co.uk - basic functionality Twitter app
Profile view: not visible
Search results: namesearch: their tweets show up, hashtag search: tweets show up
Embedded RTed links: Not seen specific examples but given their actual tweets are visible anyway...


iPhone apps 
Twitter for iPhone
Profile view: I cannot see the profile of an account that has blocked me, it says that I'm blocked.
Search results: I can't see any tweets they've sent in search results. Clicking on other people's tweets in response to the blocker's tweets also doesn't show their original tweet in conversation.
Embedded RTed links: These are where the blocker's tweet is retweeted as an embedded link. Clicking on these referred links shows "Error loading Tweets (401)" - previously it would have displayed the tweet and any conversation.

Echofon for iPhone
Profile view: I can't see any tweets (the message given is that they've made their account private, though that's not true) but I can see their followers / following list
Search results: their tweets show up in search results. Clicking on the tweet lets me reply to it or retweet it (comment RT only).
Embedded RTed links: Tweets show in search and appear as normal embedded tweets, rather than "this tweet is unavailable". However clicking on the tweet brings up a blank page.

Osfoora for iPhone
Janetter for iPhone
- both show tweets in search results

Android apps
Twitter for Android
I don't have an Android phone so can't test this myself but discussions on Twitter suggest that profiles are now properly blocked. I don't know about search results or conversation threads. Let me know, thanks.

Fenix for Android
I'm seeing reports on Twitter that this no longer shows tweets

Twicca for Android
Reports on Twitter suggest that tweets from blocked accounts are still visible. 


Conclusion
It's now a lot harder for someone to see your tweets if you've blocked them (or for you to see the tweets of someone who's blocked you). But it's not impossible and I often wonder if making it look as if it's harder just misleads people a bit. If your account is public, it's visible to everyone. 

Answering questions about Twitter on Twitter: doing a sort of Twitter Surgery

Every so often I answer (the) questions (that I can answer) about Twitter and following today's discussions I thought I'd try and answer any Twitter-related questions for the next half hour or so. Obviously I don't know everything about Twitter (!) but if you also add the hashtag #TwitterHelp then this increases the chance that someone else might see it and produce an answer. Anyone seeing a tweeted question that they can answer should answer it, is my basic policy.

I'll include Qs and As below (anonymously).

If everyone's out at the pub or watching television then there won't be any Qs or As below :-)

--------

Twitter's spam reporting leaves a lot to be desired

I have recently spotted a lot of identical or suspiciously similar tweets on the #homeopathy hashtag coming from 'bots' (automated fake accounts). They are indiscriminately retweeting and favouriting positive and negative tweets about the subject so it's not clear if they're on a particular 'side' or what their purpose is. They are also tweeting more generally about health and weight loss so I would have to assume they exist to tweet a particular link or two and are covering their backs by tweeting other health-related stuff as well, ie hiding in plain sight. It's a popular tactic.

As they deliberately avoid sending spam tweets blocking them 'for' posting spam is not quite right and Twitter's options for reporting them correctly are therefore a bit limited.

The accounts are almost always female (according to their avatar) with digits at the end of their name, eg Jodie123. Their bios look similarly cut and paste with liberal use of dividers like ✦, ✶ or ✪ (I have to admit I use | and / in my bio, or did until I recently changed it).

Examples below

• TV addict ✦ Professional Speaker ✦ Soccer fanatic ✦ Subtly charming geek ✦ 53 Countries since 2012
• Social media fan ✶ Author of fantasy books ✶ Travel consultant ✶ Beauty appreciator ✶ Technology lover
• Advocate for human dignity ✪ Spirituality ninja ✪ Sunglass fan ✪ Detoxification ✪ Nerd 

They are mostly retweeting genuine tweets so their spam-like behaviour is more subtle and probably only noticeable if you are the one whose tweets (or tweets you're mentioned in) are being favourited ('liked') or retweeted - it's not apparent just from looking at their timeline, you have to be aware of several similar accounts to get the full picture.

In other words you can only really see the spam if you're in a position to be able to see the spam!

An example would be that you've tweeted about #homeopathy and a lot of similar-looking accounts retweet it. I suppose it's a tiny bit like #EverydaySexism which is largely invisible unless you're a woman who regularly experiences a range of men making comments at you. Different people moving through an otherwise identical space see and experience it very differently.

I am reporting these accounts as spam though I've not seen many of them being removed (I suspect Twitter just disagrees with my assessment because each account doesn't, individually, look particularly spammy). I'm not sure if Twitter pays attention to my pattern of reporting (ie several similar accounts in a short space of time) but I wish they did because then I think they'd notice the problem.

Perhaps Twitter isn't particularly bothered about these types of accounts. They aren't very harmful, beyond spouting nonsense into the Twittersphere (but let's face it we all do that too), they're not abusive and they're not posting the same tweeted link over and over again. But they don't contribute to the ecosphere.

While we're at it I still hate all those Sumall and Commun.it tweets that thank a bunch of strangers for tweeting (and do it in such a way that the tweet is visible to ALL of the tweeter's followers, and not just the strangers they're thanking - ugh).

What a depressing thought that future internet archaeologists will be left with the "(insight by commun.it)" tweets which, by volume alone, must surely be taking up plenty of Twitter's server space. Have a scroll though some of them and despair ;) Drivel.


 

Echofon is (sort of) a hacker-tool for Twitter

Echofon is a third party Twitter app which I use, as the free ad-supported version, on an iPhone. I also (primarily) use desktop Twitter on Firefox. Over the years of using both concurrently I've drawn a few conclusions about the differences between the two, which boil down to.

Echofon...
1. Tells you what app or platform someone's used to send a tweet
2. Lets you see the tweets of someone who's blocked you
3. Lets you see the (previously public) tweets of someone who's recently (within 5 days or so) made their account private - I think they might have now fixed this but haven't tested much (8 Dec 2015)

I daresay other apps will let you do these too.

1. What app?
In the tweets below you can see that one says sent 'via Twitter Web Client' which means I sent it from my computer and the other 'via Echofon' which means I sent the tweet from my phone's app.

There probably aren't many times you'd need this information but I have used it in a vaguely 'forensic' sense to help someone strongly indicate that someone else sent a tweet themselves and that it wasn't automated. A big caveat is that the 'via Twitter Web Client' would also appear if I had used the Chrome browser app on my iPhone to send a tweet.

2. See tweets if blocked
I had been blocked by a homeopathy enthusiast for some time, without realising it, because their tweets showed up on the #homeopathy hashtag which I occasionally entertain myself with on desktop Twitter. If I click on their username on desktop it tells me I'm blocked but if I click on their name on Echofon it just shows me all their tweets, followers / following etc. Echofon doesn't appear to distinguish accounts blocking me from accounts not blocking me - I can't favourite or retweet a tweet, but otherwise if I was using only Echofon I'd probably not realise.

On any app or platform (possibly with the exception of Twitter for Android) you can simply search the person's username to see alll of their tweets (and replies. To see only their tweets use from:name). Or log out, of course.

3. See newly locked accounts
This was a new one to me and I only noticed it today. Via Echofon I've spotted a tweet sent 17 hours earlier and another one sent within 48 hours that both showed up in search results, from accounts that have since locked their accounts and which I don't follow. Clicking on the account's name in both cases tells me that I can't see their tweets and that their accounts are private. However searching for from:username brings up what I think are all the tweets they sent before locking their account.

This is probably shortlived and I expect in a few hours or days I won't be able to do this for either of those accounts, assuming that there's some time-restricted window that, once passed, means I won't be able to see any of their tweets (public tweets are also cached by Google so may still be visible until Google re-indexes them, and finds that it can't and removes them). I can't see who they follow or are followed by though.

I can see (on 14 Nov) the tweets sent by someone on 10 Nov before they made their account private. From tweets sent in reply to them later it seems their later tweets don't show up.

Twitter's information about public / private tweets https://support.twitter.com/articles/14016#

Free ad-supported Echofon is also very annoying in that it regularly and frequently auto-opens the App Store on the iPhone in an attempt to get you to buy in-app purchases. It did it 7 times in 45s once but that's unusual, it goes through phases of not doing it for ages and then does it once every 20 seconds for a short while. On an iphone quickly double-tap the home button at the bottom to minimise all apps then swipe upwards on the trying-to-open-itself App store. 

A quick post for @colmsmyth about what you can see when someone blocks you

For the last 11 months I've kept a search open for people talking about the block on Twitter and if they say anything indicating that someone you've blocked can't see your tweets then I generally tweet back and point out, politely, that this isn't quite the case. I'm sure I am the most annoying person in the world (and occasionally people tell me to thrrppp, but mostly it's indifference and sometimes people are pleased to know about it and make their accounts private if they've been experiencing abuse from someone monitoring their tweets) but it bothers me a lot that Twitter's clarity on what happens when you block someone is so... turbid.

What you can or can't see when someone blocks you depends a great deal on what platform or software you're using. It seems that Twitter for Android behaves differently from Twitter for iPhone, and on Echofon for iPhone not only can you see all their tweets but you can see their profile too (but not on Twitter for iPhone). On desktop Twitter (Mac, Firefox) you can't see their profile page but you can see all their tweets by searching for their username (their hashtagged tweets would also show up if you happened to be looking at the hashtag search results).

Colm Smyth has also found a trick using an IFTTT (IF This Then That) script that sends all tweets from a blocked account to you. I was intrigued to discover that he doesn't see all tweets when searching their username though.

So we tried it out and he's blocked me for half an hour while I take some screenshots, so that I can show him what I see when I look at his profile and search for his tweets, while blocked. First I logged out and refreshed the page.

Here's me logged out...

Here's me logged in again and unable to see his profile when I go to his page...

Here's me searching for his tweets. I've typed from:colmsmyth into the search bar. If I type just colmsmyth then I see only my tweets until I click the 'Live' link. The 'Top' link is shown first by default, underlined in blue in the picture below, just above the avatar in the first of his tweets I can see. I'd just see more tweets (and in their correct order) by clicking the Live option.

It is quite possible that his system shows something else entirely. Twitter has given users inconsistent and incomplete information about how the block works.

As far as I can tell, from Twitter's point of view when you block someone you no longer have to see their tweets (they cannot contact you through that account). Given there are so many ways / workarounds for the blockee to see your tweets I have to assume that preventing that from happening was never really a 'thing'. Of course you can always log out of your account and view any public account. You might think 'everyone knows that' but I can assure you, from 11 months of chatting to strangers about it, that it's not actually obvious or intuitive to everyone until they considered it or had it pointed out to them. Of course once they realise, it's perfectly obvious.

Many people form their mental model of the way Twitter's block works from the system that they use to implement a block or experience a block (and this is perfectly reasonable). It is not obvious that the way a block works on 'your Twitter' does not transfer to 'other people's Twitter' though, where blocks may be much leakier on different apps.

I've no objection to the block being leaky (there is actually no technological solution to this given that Twitter is public by default and there is no need to log in to view content), just the fact that Twitter implies that it isn't. It is.

Spambots that favourite random tweets on Twitter - a possible (gradual) solution

I am a bit surprised that @Twitter's not suspended these accounts. They are not necessarily posting spam (mostly sharing identical tweets with photos of underdressed people) but I don't think they're contributing that much to Twitter. I've blocked all of them after they've favourited tweets of mine. I assume favouriting is to make the account look like it's engaging in 'normal Twitter behaviour'. But perhaps I am just a terrible prude ;)

There are instructions below if you want to block them in one go. I've used TweeterID to convert their Twitter names to their Twitter ID, which Twitter uses for blocklists.

There seem to be hundreds of them but here's a selection:
https://twitter.com/JuliaOconnoztj
https://twitter.com/RubyFrazieratw
https://twitter.com/LilianaMaxw8lj
https://twitter.com/SydneyCrawfdo1
https://twitter.com/Teahyunggi32172
https://twitter.com/BossSaranin
https://twitter.com/ValyaChekinev [Google search results for 'her' image - http://preview.tinyurl.com/orwp7pl]
https://twitter.com/1980Urban
https://twitter.com/v_ignatenkov - not awfully safe for work ;)
https://twitter.com/ryasnovl - OK this one might just be a webcam sort of thing
https://twitter.com/MissVariychuk
https://twitter.com/LadySlablyuk
https://twitter.com/zalymova
https://twitter.com/phili_trask
https://twitter.com/robyn_rockin1
https://twitter.com/1973Dolganova
https://twitter.com/kovaltsovl
https://twitter.com/1997_voronina

INSTRUCTIONS for spamblock2015 file
Save a copy of https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4000104/spamblock2015.csv
Delete Column B - all that should remain is a single column of numbers

Using the desktop version of Twitter log in and go to Settings / Blocked: https://twitter.com/settings/blocked
Click the 'Advanced options' link then 'import a list' then 'Attach a file to upload' - upload the file. To be honest I've no idea what happens after that!

Every so often I'll update the file with the new ones I block, filename won't change. Assuming it works if you check back and download then upload a later version of the file it will overwrite and you'll be blocking more of the spammers. I'm hoping that this might get Twitter to start suspending these accounts (in which case the list of accounts to block will actually reduce).

spamblock2015.csv file last updated 20 July 2015, 14:45 BST (prev 17 July 2015, 22:20).

Twitter metrics tools and automated spam - how to unsubscribe

How to unsubscribe from receiving automated tweets from...
• paper.li - tweet @newscrier saying stop mentions. Ctrl+F-search for newscrier here for more info.
• Commun.it - email info@commun.it asking to have your Twitter account added to their blacklist
• SumAll - I don't know, they're looking into it but claim they can't do it
• TweetJukebox - I don't know, they said they'd consider adding an opt-out function
 

---

This is a small grumpy rant. In the global scheme of things if this is all I/we have to worry me/us then we're not doing too badly. But honestly, I ask you - why are we OK with automated services spamming people with irrelevant tweets about interactions etc on Twitter? 

Recently I and a few other people were thanked collectively in a single tweet. While I recognised someone else in the list I'd no idea who the sender was or why it had come to me. After searching for any previous conversations we had I realised I'd replied to a tweet that had been RTed into my timeline, and I was now being thanked for doing so.

However the person hadn't sent this tweet, an automated system had. Echofon, which is a mobile Twitter app, tells you what service the person used to send the tweet (most Twitter apps don't) - I could see that this one said 'via Commun.it'.

Tweet management and analytic services like commun.it, SumAll and TweetJukebox do a bit of behind-scenes number crunching and then send auto-tweets from the accounts of people who've signed up saying things like

"Thanks to @Harry, @Hermione and @Ron for the RTs this week (insight by TweetMarketingTool)"

Perhaps my dislike of these tweets is a bit extreme but here are my objections.

1. There are thousands of these identical tweets being sent from different accounts, it's pretty spammy
2. It's poorly formatted. If it's meant to be sent to someone then their @name should be first, not in the middle. Presumably this means it's intending to thank people more publicly, which seems self-serving to me. Public thanking has its place (sparingly done) but pinging these out and telling all your followers about someone else's interaction with you seems odd
3. It isn't sent in reply-to anything in particular (no threading to cue you into a conversation) so puzzled people might have no idea why they're receiving a tweet
4. Three otherwise-unrelated people are included in the tweet for no obvious reason
5. It's automated and the person whose account sent it may be unaware that they've thanked a bunch of people - algorithmically-generated gratitude doesn't come across as very genuine

Blocking people who send these tweets is overkill but also ineffective because the tweet hasn't really come from them, but from the Twitter-metric tool. I'd have thought using automated tools to send spam to a number of people would be against Twitter's terms of service but given the volume of these tweets in existence, and the services not being banned yet, I suppose not.

Here's what Twitter says, to app / tool developers, about the need for letting users opt out (this comes from their Automation rules and best practice page -

"Automated replies and mentions
The reply and mention functions are intended to make communication between users easier, and automating these processes in order to reach many users is considered an abuse of the feature. If your application creates or facilitates automated reply messages or mentions to many users, the recipients must request or otherwise indicate an intent to be contacted in advance. For example, sending automated replies based on keyword searches is not permitted. Users must also have a clear and easy way to opt-out of receiving automated reply messages and mentions from your application."

Twitter services I've been in touch with
commun.it - email info@commun.it and ask them to 'blacklist' you

I had an email exchange with commun.it after I received a couple of 'via Commun.it' tweets in May 2015, and I absolutely failed to make my point with them. They were steadfast in their belief that their product is not spam and that people like receiving automated thank yous and other identikit communications (I'm sure some of them do). My request, that I never wanted to receive another tweet via their system, was met with puzzlement and instead they tried to offer me a free trial of the VIP service. They offered some suggestions on how the wording of the automated tweet might be improved while failing to realise that it was the automatedness that's the problem. Eventually six months later they agreed to blacklist me and I've not received a commun.it spam tweet since September 2015.

TweetJukebox - no info yet on how to opt out

"THANK YOU TWEETS: When a user mentions you, where we come from it is common to "thank" them. Using our Thank You Tweet tool, you automatically thank up to 50 people for their interaction every Friday. Your jukebox system will thank the top Twitter™ users that mentioned you during the week. This feature is automatic, you don't have to do anything. Yes, that's right, more free time. Woohoo!"

It is common, and polite, to thank people but it's a bit impractical to thank everyone that interacts with you on Twitter (and a little bit weird). Weirder still when it's done by a machine.

Tweet Jukebox did at least understand my bleating and may well instigate something that lets me tell its system that I never want to receive these, which is great. Can't see anything in their FAQ announcing it yet though.

SumAll - no info yet on how to opt out
Their helpful support person told me that at the moment they're unable to let people opt out from receiving automated mentions. I think that's quite bad but they've at least agreed to pass my suggestion on to their engineers.

paper.li
This creates a sort of newspaper derived from information shared by people on Twitter. You can stop the service from telling you your content's been curated by sending a 'stop mentions' tweet to @newscrier. You can also stop the service from using your content by adding your site by contacting @paper_li.

I don't think many people I know receive the paper.li spam because as soon as the service began sending their tweets out in 2010 there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and the instructions were shared to stop this promptly.

Tweets I'd be happy never to see in my timeline or mentions again
- anything from Storify telling me one of my tweets has been used in it
- any automated tweet thanking me for doing normal interactive things on Twitter
- tweets telling me how well you did on Twitter, even though I like you and am happy things are going well :)

Ideally all of these kinds of tweets would be easier to switch off for users - presumably you can still get your Twitter insights sent to you, without having to tweet this information to your followers.

Twitter and trolls - a small, incidental suggestion (yes of course it's about the block function)

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

Yesterday I read with interest that Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo, had been quoted as saying to colleagues^(1,2) that the company could do a lot more to tackle persistent irritants on Twitter. Despite some cynicism and wariness many commenters seem buoyed by the tone and urgency of the acknowledgement and of Costolo's apology.

My small contribution won't solve much but I think it would make the limitations of the block clearer to Twitter's users. An understanding of the limitations is important because many users believe (wrongly) that the block offers a stronger protection against annoying people than it actually does.

From the hundreds of tweets saying some variant of "if you block someone they can no longer see your tweets" it is clear that the block's limitations are not obvious. 

How did people come to that (wrong) conclusion?
Since an update in early December those who are using Twitter's official platforms will now see an empty page when they click on the profile of someone who's blocked them. It says 'You are blocked from following @XYZ and viewing @XYZ's Tweets. Learn more'.

This has quite understandably given many users the impression that the people they've blocked would see the same thing when visiting their profile and led to the understanding that someone can no longer see your tweets if you block them.

I have two suggestions
1. Add some extra information to the 'learn more' help page, and to the article it links to about the limitations
2. When a user blocks someone, add a popup* that includes some extra information about the block and its limitations

*with a 'got it, don't show me this again' option

What's this information that's currently missing?
While many people do know this a fairly large amount of people don't seem to be aware that if you block someone they can still see your tweets...

• by searching for from:yourname (even if they're logged in) 
• via a hashtag search, or if someone else RTs your tweets into their timeline 
• by using non-Twitter apps* (such as Echofon, Janetter, Osfoora, Tweetdeck etc) which will show profiles
• by logging out or using a second account or a private browsing session

For most people a block works fine to stop someone's tweets from arriving, but if you really want to avoid them reading your tweets then a private account is probably more suitable. It is not possible to prevent one person from being able to read your tweets.

 *perhaps Twitter will require these third-party apps to observe the block function in future updates - however not everyone automatically updates their apps (and there are plenty of other workarounds).

1) Twitter CEO: 'We suck at dealing with abuse and it's all my fault' Jezebel (4 Feb 2015) 
2) Dick Costolo says trolls are costing Twitter users The Verge (4 Feb 2015)

Fun with promoted tweets - remember you can comment on them

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com 

Edit 2 August 2014: when I first published this post I was unaware that (a) it costs the advertiser each time you interact with a promoted tweet (ha!) and that (b) quite separately, people might deliberately respond to advertisers to let them know of their anger about Twitter's poor response re bullying / harrassment etc for example).

I just found out that replying to a promoted tweet, even just with heckling, costs the promoter between 50¢ and $5. Use that as you will.
— Tom Scott (@tomscott) August 1, 2014

I screen capped a mnth of advertiser TWs on my TL-should I send you a copy of what I send them documenting what they support? #askcostolo
— Sarah Stardust (@SarahDeLe) July 29, 2014

The short version
The way Twitter handles threaded conversations means that any reply you post to a promoted tweet can be seen by anyone else, if you want to have a little bit of fun with particularly irritating and poorly targeted (and persistent) ones. Each time you click, RT, reply to or favourite a promoted tweet the advertiser is apparently charged for this 'engagement', though presumably they set a cap for the amount they will pay to Twitter.

The post
I have used Twitter for six years and benefited hugely from it yet I've never paid them a bean. It would be churlish to begrudge them revenue and I wish them well in collecting it.

One of the ways I think they're doing this is to charge people to promote tweets - they've been doing it since at least July 2011. Note that I said people and not advertisers or companies. Anyone can pay to promote their tweet to a bunch of people. And they do, and some of them are ... well, a bit pointless.

Initially it was mostly companies promoting a product or service through Twitter but now it seems that anyone with less sense than money can join in.

Here are some that I've had promoted into my timeline.

 

New addition (31 July 2014)

"Eh?" was my reaction to this promoted tweet.

None of them appear to be advertising anything (the last one has a link but it's just to a picture of a bit of plastic-coated wire). I suppose this is a modern-day calling card of sorts. 

Genuine company-promoted tweets are a bit different. Some are useful, interesting and relevant others are poorly targeted and there seems to be no way of avoiding them. Blocking the sender makes no difference as far as I can see, and replying to them rarely makes much of a difference (though any interaction with their tweet costs them money), but doing so did give me an idea for some mild sneakery.

You can comment on promoted tweets

Thanks to the way Twitter threads conversations a tweet becomes part of a conversation once anyone replies to it. When you click on the tweet you can see most⁽¹⁾ of the other tweets that people have sent in reply. This means that, merely by replying, you can 'graffiti' a promoted tweet. Unless Twitter makes it so that promoted tweets can't have replies there's not much the company can do to stop this commentary - unless they delete that tweet.

To be honest I think this sort of thing should probably be reserved for only the really irritating tweets that are irrelevant and persistent - let's not all be mean to people who mis-send a tweet every now and again.
 
Do promoters understand this?
Having clicked on a few promoted tweets now (both from companies and people who seem to have promoted a tweet by accident), and seen the replies, it seems that sending out a promoted tweet can really open you up to some unpleasant responses. I don't know if Twitter is warning advertisers - I assume they're being told that their tweets are being targeted to relevant people but having received so many that are so off-target this system might need to iron out a few glitches. Mis-targeted tweets probably increases the unpleasantness of responses as people find these promoted tweets pretty irritating. The problem, for advertisers, is not just the unpleasant replies ('snark yes, unpleasantness no' would be my motto) but the fact that others can see the unpleasant replies thanks to threading, and also that each response or interaction is costing them money.

Skeptical activism - an opportunity

This could backfire horribly. I got the idea from a disgruntled air passenger who paid for a tweet to be promoted to people telling them that the airline he travelled on had terrible customer service. About a year ago the Advertising Standards Authority adjudicated against an advert for a company that makes a tape that you stick to your skin to prevent muscular problems and injury. It's utter nonsense (aka kinesio tape) but the products sell well despite this. I jokingly suggested that a bunch of people crowdsource funds to pay for a promoted tweet that sends the link of the ASA's adjudication on kinesio tape nonsense to people on Twitter who mention the tape. Though I'd certainly not want the tweet to come from my account ;-)

Edit 2 August - I'm not sure if this works, if payment isn't given in advance but only for each 'impression'. Could go terribly wrong ;)

(1) Twitter no longer shows the entirety of a conversation, you have to go on a bit of a hunt if you want to see branched conversations.

Once embedded in a blog post a tweet will stay there even if deleted from Twitter (in theory)

This is another one of those posts that's really just for me ;)

On 1 May 2011 I sent a tweet and then, a day later I deleted it. It's still there though because before deleting it I added it to Storify, and now it's trapped there forever. The take-home lesson from this is that even if a tweet's later deleted, once it's been saved in Storify it's permanently saved (you can also take screenshots etc).

I've never tried it in a blog post but am expecting it to work because Twitter's help files indicate that it should*. An embedded tweet inherits all the information that lets someone who's reading it on a blog post (instead of on Twitter) interact with it - they can favourite or RT it. If the tweet is deleted from Twitter this is no longer possible but the text of the tweet (and who sent it and when) remains.

Let's see... I just sent this and will soon delete it.

URL of tweet: https://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/487658994925072385

Embedded version:

This is a test tweet that I'm going to embed in a blog post or two and then delete. Only tested w Storify b4, 3y ago https://t.co/mjcI6xocLu
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) July 11, 2014

Now to delete it and see what happens. (According to the info below if I made my account private that would have the same effect).

Edit 
Now that the tweet is deleted you can see what it looks like above, and this is how it had appeared on this post before I deleted it from Twitter.

 

*"What if a user deletes a Tweet after it has been embedded on another website? Similarly, what happens to Tweets from users that change their Tweets from public to protected (or become suspended)?

In all of these cases, Twitter branding and Tweet actions will be removed from the embedded Tweet, but the content of the Tweet will still be visible."

In praise of manual RTs

Every now and again there are tiny discussions on Twitter about how dreadful manual RTs are, as if they are 'stealing' someone's content and repackaging it as one's own. I've no truck with this notion myself because a manual RT includes the name of the person who sent it (if it's a 'naked' tweet then yes, that's stealing) and the person is notified in their mentions / notifications.

A manual RT is one where you see RT, MT or via in front of the original senders's name (RT = retweet, MT = modified tweet, where it's amended to fit the space). Usually a comment is added (these are sometimes known as comment RTs) - and if it isn't I'd be more in agreement with the complainers (but there are *exceptions, see below).

On Echofon for iPhone you get the option to 'retweet' (that's the automatic one) or 'retweet with comment' whereas on desktop Twitter.com the button lets you do automatic tweets only. To manually RT you need to copy and paste the tweet into a 'compose new tweet' edit-space and prune to fit / add commentary.

For a long time this was the only way to retweet as Twitter was a bit slow in bringing in the automatic RT function. 

Pros of manual RTs

• The most useful aspect of a manual RT is that it's a quick way of trapping that text in your timeline - if the original is deleted you still have your copy. You can find the content easily later (it's in your own archive) and don't have to remember the name of the person who sent it - there are lots of better ways of permanently trapping a tweet though.
• If the tweet has a URL in it you may be able to get an idea of how often it's been clicked (I'm honestly not sure about this though and don't know what click number is being given in Twitter Analytics) - no, the new Twitter Analytics appears to tell you only about your tweet not how often the link's been clicked overall (the previous version did show this).
• You can add a comment, hopefully pithy and useful
• If the tweet was automatically RTed into your timeline you can add back the name of the person who brought it to you. I always feel that with automatic RTs this aspect is missed out which is a shame because that is information about 'the network'. If someone regularly sends fascinating stuff into my timeline and I automatically RT it I think it's denying anyone seeing my RT from knowing that there's someone else they might like to follow as well. Sometimes people send a separate tweet 'that tweet via @XYZ) which is clunky but if it can be done in the manual RT so much the better). 
• You can pin it to your new timeline, if you like that sort of thing. You can't pin other people's tweets (fair enough they're not yours to pin) but if you manually RT them they become 'as from your timeline' and you can pin to your heart's content.

Cons

• It seems to irritate some people, although that might be a Pro depending on who's being annoyed ;)
• It makes it harder to see how 'well' a particular tweet did since each tweet carries with it its number of automatic RTs and favourites.
• If someone has switched off RTs for your account (say you auto-RT a lot of stuff) then this bypasses that and may irritate them, though this may also be a pro as well depending on the circumstances.

Neither pros nor cons
Since Twitter notifies you anyway if someone else retweets your retweet, or a tweet you were mentioned in it makes not a whit of difference to your knowledge of how that tweet is being shared. It does make a difference to the RT-count on your own tweet (if you were the one who sent it) so if you're doing metrics on a tweet campaign you may need to count other stuff too, if you must :)

//Yes you can send links in DMs
While I'm at it, I still see a lot of people wondering about this. The trick is to send plain text, not hyperlinked URLs. Twitter automatically recognises anything URL-like (http://www.google.co.uk) as something to turn into a clickable blue link (http://www.google.co.uk) and it rejects the majority of these in DM messages, purportedly to reduce click-spam phishing attacks). All you need to do is tweak the URL to stop Twitter from recognising it as an URL.

Strategies such as adding non-URL characters, eg ^^ somewhere in the middle work fine (the recipient needs to know how to 'mend' the deliberately broken URL though) or you could put something at the front of the http:// eg Xhttp:// (Twitter still recognises text strings as addresses even with the htt... protocol bit removed).  See tip 2 in Some Twitter tips, not exhaustive but probably useful. 

Television & Twitter interaction - small suggestions to make Twitter a little easier for beginners to use

Topline suggestions (for making it easier for non-Twitter users to follow along with Twitter) are:
TV folk - don't use #bbcqt or @BBCOne on-screen, use instead
twitter.com/#bbcqt or
twitter.com/@BBCOne - the bold is the salient bit for those familiar w Twitter, the rest will be helpful for those who aren't, so they know what web address to go to.

---

Twitter is apparently keen for people watching television programmes to interact more with Twitter while doing so. I'm in favour but the practical 'how to' seems to be confusing for people who aren't already familiar with Twitter. Here's my attempt at setting out what I think problems might be, and some solutions. If yours are better, or you can point out where mine are wrong, please add them in the comments and I'll update the post.

1. What do #hashtag and @ScreenName mean to the uninitiated?
As far as I've noticed, when television programmes want to encourage viewer interaction by Twitter they tend to flash up a hashtag (#bbcqt, which stands for BBC Question Time) or a Twitter name (@BBCOne) on screen.

This tells everyone watching, who's on Twitter, what to do. It tells almost no-one who's watching, but not a Twitter user, what to do or how to interact with them. To access these you have to find them on Twitter first (if you're using twitter.com then just add /BBCOne or #bbcqt to the end of http://twitter.com)

2. Use web addresses - (more) people understand web addresses
I've not noticed many people using URLs to make it easier but let me know if you have.

My suggestion is for Twitter and television to use a TV-friendly shortened URL because I think most people understand a web address and know what to do with it. The t.co one would do I suppose but twitter.tv would be lovely.

If at all possible then
twitter.tv/#bbcqt would resolve to
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23bbcqt&src=typd&f=realtime

and
twitter.tv/BBCOne would resolve to
https://twitter.com/bbcone

To be fair you can sort of already do this with Twitter.com (though I prefer twitter.tv if it exists!), so
twitter.com/#bbcqt will take you to the top tweets and resolve to this URL
https://twitter.com/hashtag/bbcqt

and
twitter.com/@BBCOne already works with or without the @ and resolves to
https://twitter.com/@BBCOne

So... why aren't on-screen hashtags and Twitter feeds shown as
twitter.com/#hashtag - the # is necessary otherwise Twitter will try and find someone whose handle is the same as the hashtag (very likely in almost all cases), and not search for all the tagged tweets
and
twitter.com/@ScreenName

Or has everyone started doing this and I've just not noticed?

Edit: 26 March 21:45
When I tweeted this post out this morning Peter Harrison made this rather good suggestion - that definitely has potential.

@JoBrodie If Twitter themselves are interested, they could include a TV tab that lists live shows (for your country). When you select one...
— Peter Harrison (@Harrison_Peter) March 26, 2014

3. Simplify sign-up for people landing on Twitter via a hashtag (and everyone else)
I'm assuming that many novice users to Twitter might be using Twitter.com on a web browser rather than a smartphone - I've never tried to create a Twitter account from a smartphone but I assume it's straightforward. The suggestions below are for those using Twitter.com

Twitter could make things a bit easier for people signing up - if a novice user arrives at the hashtagged tweets they might want to join in. Why not offer them a "want to add your voice?" button which gives them a quick signup and then lets them tweet, with the draft tweet showing up the hashtag already (which they can delete if they don't want to tweet with it).

Save the showing them 'who to follow' until later. Why is it always celebrities? Why not just invite people to search for a topic that interests them and have a look at a few of the tweets.

4. Other stuff that would be nice
a) Let people follow hashtags as if they were a 'person'
When a hashtag is created, automatically generate a feed (ie a screen name) that people can follow so that the tagged tweets show up in their timeline, and they don't have to view them in a separate screen. Obviously everyone would need to be a bit careful to distinguish between someone whose Twitter name is the same as the hashtag and all tweets tagged with the hashtag but I don't think this is particularly difficult.

b) Make search more obvious to people if not logged in!
There's literally no search bar on Twitter's front page (you have to know to type something like http://search.twitter.com which resolves to https://twitter.com/search-home - why? why??

Browsing through a bunch of tagged or other tweets can give people a good idea of why Twitter can be useful and interesting.

The front page of Twitter.com if you're not logged in - no search option

Background thinking on the above
Twitter is apparently quite keen to embed itself within television viewing and I'd have to agree that having Twitter open while watching television myself has turned out to be a bit of a modern joy. I've been reminded to watch programmes I've wanted, or turned over to another channel following tweeted advice, answered queries that have popped up through a hashtag and had my own answered, shared further information on the hashtag and generally had a wholly pleasant and generally 'augmented' time.

The only time I've ever watched BBC Question Time (I'm not a fan of confrontational live television) was when I caught up with the tweets about it on the bus home while Hugh Grant was ninja-ing his way through the questions. I've never seen it since but enjoy the rage-by-proxy afforded me thanks to the #bbcqt hashtag, while I enjoy the much nicer Family Guy.

When #Sherlock was broadcast earlier in the year the combination of [TV programme + tweeting] became almost a sub-genre in itself, with Twitter UK blogging about the unprecedented number of hashtagged tweets sent during the programme.

The other day I read Twitter's dream for TV: You will never watch alone (Quartz, 19 March 2014) which said:

"Twitter’s engagement levels around TV are extremely high. Graver [Fred Graver, Twitter's head of television] says that 95% of public conversations about TV happen on the platform, and that 33% of Twitter users tweet about the shows they watch. People generally only tweet once about a show—the average is actually 1.5 times per user because of the”loudmouths” who tweet to excess—and 70% of tweets happen within three hours of a show airing.  The challenge is to convince the uninitiated to use the platform. "It ain’t easy and we know it’s not easy and it’s something we have to work on," Graver said..." [emphasis added]

I also read Twitter hints that at-replies and hashtags are about to be streamlined (Buzzfeed, 19 March 2014) referring to Vivian Schiller (head of news at Twitter) who apparently said that the # and @ symbols were arcane (true I suppose) and that they might be made less obvious and put more in the background. The nice thing about that article is that they keep updating it as people backpedal on what bits of Twitter might be updated... The inherent 'clickability' of the @name and #hashtag (they appear as blue* links as soon as the @.. and #.. are typed into the Twitter.com tweet popup window) makes it easier for people to get a sense of what they are.

Might add more bits here as other stuff pops into my head :)

Blocking someone on Twitter - what can they see?

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com
 
Hello if you've arrived here after clicking on the link in the @FriendlyBlocker account. I don't log into it very often but let me know on @JoBrodie if you want me to block your account and if I'm at work or doing stuff we can arrange a time later - or if you're really keen to see blocking in action immediately I recommend using a spare email address to set up another account and run some tests yourself.

This is my main Twitter account at @JoBrodie

I can also occasionally be found at @FriendlyBlocker although that's a spare account that I use only for testing purposes. It looks like this:

The @JoBrodie account has blocked the @FriendlyBlocker one so, when logged in as FriendlyBlocker here's what I see when I look at 'JoBrodie' - not much.

 

I can't see any tweets and there's a message saying "You are blocked from following @JoBrodie and viewing @JoBrodie's Tweets. Learn more".

Does this mean I can't view @JoBrodie's tweets? NO!

All I have to do to see @JoBrodie's tweets is one of the following

1. Search for the tweets

Type, into the search bar (or go to search.twitter.com) from:jobrodie and all my tweets will appear (I can also type jobrodie to see all the tweets I've sent or that have been sent to me).

2. Log out / use a different browser or an incognito tab (without logging in)

Log out on your browser

Once you've logged out Twitter no longer knows that you are 'you' and so it can't know that someone's blocked 'you' and will show you all their tweets 

Open a different browser

If you're not logged in, it's as above - Twitter doesn't know you're you

Open an incognito tab on the browser you've got open

A private or incognito tab won't log you in (unless you log yourself in) so is the same as above.

3. Use a different account to log in with

Similarly if another account hasn't been blocked you can use that to view someone's tweets

4. Use a third party app

Twitter's block appears to be very 'effective' on desktop Twitter and apparently it's fairly variable on Twitter for iPhone (don't have an Android or other phone or tablet so limited testing I'm afraid). If I'm logged in as @FriendlyBlocker and try and view @JoBrodie from Echofon, Janetter or Osfoora on iPhone I can see both the profile page and all the tweets.

In my test set up I've used my account to block FriendlyBlocker but if you're testing the block system then FriendlyBlocker will block you, so you need to try and view the tweets from the @FriendlyBlocker account, not mine.

Here's a screenshot of what I can see on Echofon, I can click on the tweets and see all of them as well. Echofon lets you see everything (same for other third party apps I've tried).

Please note
This post has been significantly updated and altered from the original (published on 14 January 2014) and as such all comments below, before 14 December, will now be out of date and possibly irrelevant.

How to make it look like you've embedded a short Storify into a free Wordpress dot com blog post

I'm a little smugger than usual today because I worked out how to do a slightly clever thing. It's not difficult, though a little fiddly and requires patience but it worked well. I managed to create a blog post on Wordpress.com that looks as if I've managed to embed a Storify story in it.

Jump to '5. How I did it' to find out how I did it...

Also see useful comment from @krelnik below. As always I write these things only for someone to tell me of an easier way later :-)

---

1. Exciting background preamble
I recently had an interesting chat with a colleague on Twitter and realised in the middle of it that I should capture this and add it to the 'work Storify' for @chi_med (it lives at 'Using everyday errors to understand more serious ones').

2. You can't embed Storify stories in free Wordpress dot com
The work blog (http://chimedblog.wordpress.com) is hosted at the free version of Wordpress and the one thing you can't do is embed a Storify story there. This is because of the type of scripting that Storify uses (I think, it's a bit beyond my technical payscale) but it's well-known that it can't yet be done.

You can embed a Storify in blogger and it works really well, recreating itself each time the blog post is loaded. Here's an example.

I have made a bit of a study of things you can and can't embed in the free version of Wordpress at "Will it embed? How to embed all sorts of things on free Wordpress dot com blog posts"

3. You can embed individual tweets into free Wordpress dot com but...
However you can very very easily embed individual tweets, simply by pasting the tweet's URL into the Visual editing window (not the Text editing window). The tweets embed beautifully and the end-result is very pleasing (example - some tweets from the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security).

3b. ...if they're part of a conversation you can't get rid of the preceding tweet
I tried recreating the Storify as a blog post by pasting in the text I'd written, then pasting in each tweet's link. When I came to preview it though a problem became clear - each tweet that my colleague had sent was a 'reply to' the one I'd sent. And each one showed up with my original one, every single time - it looked a repetitive mess.

4. I've no idea how to embed blog posts within a blog post (!)
One of the nice things about Storify is that you can add in more than just tweets. If you stick in a link to a blog post, or even another Storify story then the system will create a sort of thumbnail image, that's clickable and will take you to the original. Because I'd referenced a blog post and a Storify story I wanted to recreate that in my blog post but there's no obvious way to 'embed' within a post in this way...

5. How I did it
Here's the original Storify
Here's my 'faked' let's make it look like I've embedded that Storify in a blog post.

This is straightforward but would probably try your patience if you had more than 20 elements in your Storify story.

I took screenshots of the tweets, blog post and the embedded Storify story (from someone else) that I'd originally added to my own Storify story. Then I cropped them using the free MS Paint (variously called paintbrush.exe or paint.exe) that's bundled with Windows so that they were exactly the same size as they are on Storify.

Following the layout of my Storify I added in the images at the relevant points (there were 12 in total) and, for hyperlinked the tweet images to the original tweet and the blog post (and other Storify story) were hyperlinked to the relevant media.

On uploading an image to Wordpress you're given an option to change its URL. The default is the location on the Wordpress servers of your file but you can point it anywhere you like, so I did. The dialogue window looks like this (click to enlarge image). On the right hand side you can see, in the Attachment Display Settings' an option for Custom URL that lets you add in the address of your choice.

'Wrongfooted' is just a shorthand for one of the stories I embedded, about wrong-site surgery in the wrong foot - fortunately the patient was scheduled to have both feet operated on so the situation wasn't disastrous, but could have been!

6. How can you tell my version is faked?
None of the 'web intents' on the tweets work. These are the little things that, if you're logged in, let you favourite or retweet the tweet from the blog post. On mine you can only click on it to visit it in its original setting.

7. What happens if you've got hundreds of tweets in your Storify
If you have the patience to collect the URL of each tweet and embed, fine. If it's a hashtagged conversation then each tweet might not be in reply to another one so each tweet will probably show up as a single 'unit'. You can right-click on the tweet to copy its URL and stick that in the Wordpress editing window, copying and pasting any additional text that you've written in the Storify.

You do not need to have published your Storify to do this - you can create a draft copy specifically in order to generate thumbnails of blog posts, other Storify stories, websites etc - it's a pretty useful thing actually.

If you have a great long run of tweets with no text in between them then you might as well take a screenshot of five or six tweets at once, but remember you won't be able to hyperlink them individually.