[thenonsequitur]

The parameter count is enforced for each command. For GET, it needs exactly one parameter or it won't be treated as a command. So from your examples above, the longer lines would tweet fine.

I agree with treetrouble, however, this was a really bad engineering decision. They should have come up with a tweet prefix to mean "command", some symbol that would not ever start a real tweet.

[mistercow]

Yeah, /get or :get would have been way better commands, and they have precedent in preexisting social media like IRC and MUDs.

[ansgri]

They would be very inconvenient to type on the traditional cell phone though.

[thenonsequitur]

Well it doesn't have to be a symbol, just something that would not be likely to start a real tweet.

Just as an example let's say "q", followed by a space, followed by the command with the appropriate number of parameters, e.g., "q get username". That would allow otherwise-reasonable tweets that are currently being mis-interpreted ("get better" vs. "q get better").

That's just an example. There are other ways around the problem too without making things too inconvenient on a smartphone user. And sure it's possible someone somewhere will want to write a real tweet that says "q get better", but that's far far less likely than someone somewhere wanting to tweet "get better". And the point is that allowing a non-trivial portion of the tweet-space overlap with the command-space is a bad decision. A trivial overlap (like "q get better") would have been a much better decision.