Is it possible to send a message in Morse code by un-following someone on x.com?

6 points by savhascelik 3 hours ago | 15 comments

Do you think that’s possible? I’m really curious about this. Has anyone ever received a message like that? Come on, science must be able to figure this out

runjake 1 hour ago |

No, because the notification timing is not reliable. It can vary a lot depending on the load on that microservice at any given time. Also, how would you handle dits, dahs, and gaps?

savhascelik 1 hour ago | |

Your questions are quite sensible; I suppose I need to think about an asynchronous Morse code algorithm as well :)

king_zee 2 hours ago |

You only have 1 variable in your control, the time in-between follows. (I say this because there is no notification for "unfollowing" someone)

You need to represent 2 variables : the dot/dash to represent symbols, and the dit, the time in-between symbols.

If you want to do this you need some sort of 2nd action, a comment or a twitter like, that way we could represent the dot/dash with either action, and then space them out to time the silence.

savhascelik 2 hours ago | |

It seems it can be done using a few different components, even if not directly by “following”, thank you

xg15 2 hours ago |

Were you blocked?

More seriously, the events end up in a list, so a recipient would more likely "decode" them by comparing timestamps instead of "live" watching the actual sequence.

But I suppose if you timed your follows/unfollows really carefully, you could get certain patterns in the timestamps to appear which could be used to distinguish "long" and "short" pulses.

savhascelik 2 hours ago | |

No, actually, I was just wondering if messaging like that is even possible; I suppose I’ve been reading a lot lately about encryption and private messaging in public spaces.

xg15 1 hour ago | | |

Yeah, was more a joke too :) But the idea is interesting. I think in general there is a lot of metadata that could be used as covert channels.

JofArnold 2 hours ago |

Let's say you could follow and unfollow once a second and they knew it. Then you could replicate the dots and dashes by the length of time you toggled the status plus the gaps where you weren't toggling at all.

Eg in the first ten seconds 10 toggles, in the next 10 seconds a 5 second gap then 5 toggles. That would be dash, quiet, dot.

savhascelik 2 hours ago | |

Although not directly by “following”, as king_zee said, it seems it can be done using a few different components; thank you

bigyabai 3 hours ago |

With just follow/unfollowing, you can't truly encode Morse code. You would have to override a metadata field or agree on an external clock source to overcome the idempotent follow/unfollow action and encode language into the state machine.

savhascelik 3 hours ago | |

I suppose the interval between the two actions would correspond to a letter in the Morse code here

bigyabai 3 hours ago | | |

That would require an additional lookup table that doesn't qualify as Morse code, as well as an external clock source.

ada1981 3 hours ago |

Do you mean following and unfollowing in some sort of rapid succession?

savhascelik 3 hours ago | |

Yes, I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about; the interval between the two actions would correspond to a letter in Morse code