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This new service promises to text your enemies TV spoilers — but it doesn’t deliver

This new service promises to text your enemies TV spoilers — but it doesn’t deliver

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A new website called Spoil Your Enemies will anonymously send TV show spoilers to six of your enemies in exchange for $2. Just pick the show, pop in six phone numbers, and enter your payment info. The site sends you an email if the spoilers have been successfully delivered and a sad message with a thumbs-down emoji if they haven’t.

Spoilyourenemies.xyz only offers a limited set of seasons for a handful of shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Arrow. A sidebar invites visitors to suggest other shows. Creator Enrique Benitez writes on the site’s about page that he made the site to get revenge on those who liked to spoil TV shows for him — fighting fire with fire, if you will. He says sending the texts from a mysterious number meant his friends wouldn’t know how to retaliate. “I got revenge 😼. All while remaining anonymous 😎,” he writes.

In theory, it all sounds like terrible fun, but of the six people I texted, only two received the spoilers and I got four emails informing me of failed deliveries. The message failures say that Benitez will get back to me in a few minutes, with love, but it’s been over an hour. (Update: Benitez has responded to our e-mail. His explanation of what is causing the error is available below.)

TV spoilers ahead

When they work, the spoiler texts have the tone of a passive aggressive frenemy:

“Hey buddy, did you know that Summer (Bran’s direwolf) dies by getting mauled by a pack of Wights in Game of Thrones?”

“Hey folk, (sic) this will make you happy…Melissandre (The Red Woman) brings Jon Snow back to life in Game of Thrones!”

I also think the preprogrammed spoilers are also a bit too friendly. They sometimes tell you when somebody in a show lives, which is not a thing I want to be trolling my enemy with. If you really want to spoil a TV show for your frenemies, you might want to choose a more reliable anonymous-texting app.

Update July 6th, 3:22PM ET:

Benitez replied to our e-mail, explaining that he is working to fix the issue with failed text message delivery. His full comment, below, explains what’s causing the issue and how he plans to repair it.

The quote has been edited for clarity:

“The issue is related to the SMS delivery platform I’m using, Error Code 1. In short, what happened is that in the US you’re limited to send 1 SMS per second. So that’s why 2 of your spoilers succeeded and 4 didn’t.

I am implementing a throttling mechanism or background job right now to fix that.

I’m very sorry for this, I’m now sending the 4 spoilers to its destination.

Also, I saw your publication in The Verge. I’m very sorry for the issue. It was a problem with the US messaging system regulations I didn’t know about, as every country got its own system and rules when it comes to sending SMS.”