Conventions

Clever Approaches to Getting Around My Mute Filter for Tweets That Start With "dot-at"

• • https://twitter.com/sillygwailo/status/514075483953430528 is a not-reply tweet I only wanted @SlackHQ (and people who follow both me and the SlackHQ account) to see. If I wanted everybody that follows me to see it, I could have done .@SlackHQ.

  • I tune out replies people try to broadcast by using a dot then @ to start a tweet. I have a mute filter in Tweetbot that filters out tweets that start with a dot then the @ symbol. (The regex is "^.@" without the quotes.) I see people who have gotten wise to this tactic, and, in the wild, here are some clever approaches (I'm not picking on anybody, these are just examples from recent memory):

    • bullet-point-at https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/517052919644827648

    • comma-at https://twitter.com/jeapostrophe/status/516961375969497088

    • dot-dot-at https://twitter.com/SnarkySteff/status/516758793385164800

    • colon-at https://twitter.com/danudey/status/523977581008535552