For nearly 2 weeks, various Twitter users had been complaining about a strange bug due to which they were receiving notifications upon being unfollowed by a follower, but with a twist!
The notification incorrectly said that the user had “followed them” instead of stating the obvious. Even after receiving a notification that “XYZ followed you”, it was easy to figure out that the user had actually unfollowed you. VICE staff writer Marie Solis claimed that she tried testing it both ways and succeeded both in getting the notification upon being unfollowed as well as alerting the user she had unfollowed.
Several users then followed the trail but didn’t succeed. Thus, it was assumed that the bug wasn’t affecting everyone, or those who had notifications disabled for the Twitter app.
It’s a well-known fact that Twitter notifies a user every time someone follows them or likes their tweet or retweets it, based on their settings. However, the Social Networking service doesn’t contain an option where users can be notified when someone unfollows them. The main reason for this is to protect the users from being discouraged.
But still, many users still wish to find out if and when someone unfollows them (so they can return the favor, perhaps). For this purpose, there are a number of third-party services such as Who Unfollowed Me. Such services ask for permission to access a user’s Twitter data.
However, the bug that popped up recently eliminated the need of such third-party services. It was also found out that people had been posting about the bug since the second week of June (June 11 probably), courtesy of a research conducted by VICE. It’s unknown if the bug had been around even before June 11 and honestly, it’s quite hard to find that out.
However, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that it was indeed a bug. The company quickly got to work and fixed the issue a couple of days ago. Twitter’s Product Manager Sriram Krishnan confirmed the development in a response to Matt Navarra's tweet.
So, were any of you affected by this bug? Sound off in the comments section.
Photo: Simonmayer / Getty Images
Read next: Twitter modifies their ‘location tagging’ feature in tweets
The notification incorrectly said that the user had “followed them” instead of stating the obvious. Even after receiving a notification that “XYZ followed you”, it was easy to figure out that the user had actually unfollowed you. VICE staff writer Marie Solis claimed that she tried testing it both ways and succeeded both in getting the notification upon being unfollowed as well as alerting the user she had unfollowed.
Several users then followed the trail but didn’t succeed. Thus, it was assumed that the bug wasn’t affecting everyone, or those who had notifications disabled for the Twitter app.
It’s a well-known fact that Twitter notifies a user every time someone follows them or likes their tweet or retweets it, based on their settings. However, the Social Networking service doesn’t contain an option where users can be notified when someone unfollows them. The main reason for this is to protect the users from being discouraged.
But still, many users still wish to find out if and when someone unfollows them (so they can return the favor, perhaps). For this purpose, there are a number of third-party services such as Who Unfollowed Me. Such services ask for permission to access a user’s Twitter data.
However, the bug that popped up recently eliminated the need of such third-party services. It was also found out that people had been posting about the bug since the second week of June (June 11 probably), courtesy of a research conducted by VICE. It’s unknown if the bug had been around even before June 11 and honestly, it’s quite hard to find that out.
However, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that it was indeed a bug. The company quickly got to work and fixed the issue a couple of days ago. Twitter’s Product Manager Sriram Krishnan confirmed the development in a response to Matt Navarra's tweet.
So, were any of you affected by this bug? Sound off in the comments section.
Photo: Simonmayer / Getty Images
Read next: Twitter modifies their ‘location tagging’ feature in tweets
