Twitter fail blacklists Prankster Blog

A recent change in Twitter has started to blacklist The Prankster blog site.

Now when The Prankster Tweets, this error appears.

The Prankster has diligently checked himself and concludes he is not automated. Although he is a fan of Humans, he has not turned into a robot and there is no crafty code on his laptop blasting out Tweets. Most Tweets are just links to his own blog articles. No matter how many times he 'please tries again later' the error message remains; possibly, the more times The Prankster retries, the more automated he looks, and the smugger Twitter gets as it continues to blacklist posts.

Unlike The Prankster, Twitter is automated so there is no-one he can complain to to get the blacklist removed and the problem resolved. The Prankster took to splitting his links into pieces which works, in that the Tweets get posted, but doesn't work, in that you cannot click on the link to get to the blog.

Other bloggers have the same problem and Mr Mustard helpfully suggested some workarounds, such as using TinyUrl.

This works, in that the Tweet gets posted, but does not work, in that people clicking on the link now get hijacked by Twitter and sent to this page.

So what on earth are Twitter doing?

As it happens The Prankster does have some experience in this area, having 11 patents in the field of anti-spam and anti-malware hanging in his downstairs toilet*.

This blog site is hosted on Google's blogger.com. While it is possible Google have messed up and allowed malware on their servers The Prankster considers this is unlikely. The Prankster also uses a fairly basic setup without bells and whistles and so does not consider his own modifications are the problem either.

A possible reason is 'The Prescott  Effect', so called because John Prescott complained that the adverts on a fellow MP's website were for Thai Brides. It was later pointed out to him that the adverts which appeared were chosen based on his own previous browsing habits.

The Prankster does have adverts on his blog page, which are provided by Google. He is reluctant to remove them because they do almost cover his hosting costs. However, it has been known for criminals to use adverts as a place to hide malware, and it is possible that a Twitter researcher whose job it is to find malware, visited the blog and was duly served malware in an advert.

The other possibility is that it is just a cock-up by Twitter. While possibly not as serious as the time Trend Micro quarantined all email with the letter 'P', it is still annoying.

If anyone does know any humans still working at Twitter who can solve this, please point them at this email address: prankster@parking-prankster.com. All emails, including those with the letter 'P', will be accepted.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster


*this is not true as currently the downstairs toilet is being redecorated. However, it is more true than say the phrase 'this parking charge is a genuine pre-estimate of loss'.