Status is a duplicate code - 187 (but isn't)

[PaphusSolutions]

Using the Twitter REST API, I occasionally see this error,

Status is a duplicate code - 187

But the status is not a duplicate, I searched for any similar posts in the feed, and there are not any. Any idea why Twitter would throw this? The tweet does contain a link. It seems to randomly throw this on occasion when sending a set of tweets.

[cthinkel]

Hello, I’m getting the same error when using the Twitter4j API to post a Tweet. I’m positive it’s not a duplicate tweet. Any ideas?

[boxnumber03]

I have seen this, but I find that if I re-try after a few seconds the tweet is successful.

[claudeschneider]

I’m seeing this issue frequently.

I’m using the API to post a tweet (using twitteroauth PHP library). Sometimes, everything works fine (I get a 200 HTTP response, and can read the tweet ID from the response.
However, I often get at non-200 HTTP response, and error code 187, saying the tweet is a duplicate.

The problem is that a) there definitely isn’t a duplicate tweet on the user’s timeline, and b) the tweet still gets posted.

This is a problem for me because I can’t get the tweet ID, so can’t look up any stats for that tweet for the user. It also means I can’t reliably tell whether a tweet has been posted or not and handle it appropriately.

[pnbersch]

We’re also seeing 403’s with error code 187 being returned for messages that are definitely not duplicates. The status still appears on the user’s timeline even though the API response returns this error.

`403:The request is understood, but it has been refused. An accompanying error message will explain why. This code is used when requests are being denied due to update limits (https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364-about-twitter-limits-update-api-dm-and-following).
message - Status is a duplicate.
code - 187`

Example tweet ids:
734038793896878080
733281084733984768
734159842160476160

We are seeing this error hundreds of times a day for posts that do not appear to actually be duplicates.