# Twitter tips and tricks I'm reasonably sure I came up with but I kinda wish more people should use - toasters rocks

## Twitter tips and tricks I'm reasonably sure I came up with but I kinda wish more people should use

Warning: Those are kinda involved and features characters you won't find on your keyboard. If you're too lazy to fetch them from a random website I don't blame you I guess

October 11, 2022
#Rant
~2 minutes

## 1. How to evade bots and algorithmic censorship

Use Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols and you’ll be none the wiser.

Example: 𝖼𝗋𝗒𝗉𝗍𝗈 𝖭𝖥𝖳

It’s indisguishable from basic ASCII, except if you’re blind and you use a screen reader. In which case I hope you won’t mind for the sake of avoiding bots. Which is why Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. If possible, only use them for this exact use case.

## 2. Mention usernames without spamming them with notifications

Some people do for instance `@.juju2143` or `@/juju2143` to avoid sending useless notifications to someone on a tweet they know is going to be very popular or they don’t want you to see because they hate you but that’s kinda weird (also I don’t ever mind if you don’t do that send them notifications away ;))

Instead, wedge a zero-width space between the @ and the username! Impress your crowd! How do you do that! Here’s a few characters that should work:

- `U+200B` Zero-width space
- `U+200C` Zero-width non-joiner
- `U+200D` Zero-width joiner
- `U+2060` Word joiner
- `U+FEFF` Zero-width no-break space

Example: @​juju2143

Again, indistinguishable from a normal mention, except no link, but it’s also hard to copy and paste and will most likely break a lot of stuff, so use cautiously.

Have fun!

- « Introducing a39.ca

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