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I'm sure the devs will be thrilled to have yet another case for which to test:

Buggered up wall


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Same issue as meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131818/…, except in the chat sidebar. –  Anna Lear Nov 21 '12 at 6:43
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1 Answer

Oh, the folks at MSO found out about it waaay before the XKCD post:

First appearance

Post asking how it's done

Post asking it to be removed as it can be abused

It really can't be abused in chat. In comments, you can impersonate people with it, but not in chat (except in the starred list). Since the devs aren't really bothered about it being there in comments, I doubt they will be bothered it being in chat. So, no biggie.

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I'm not even so sure about the significance of using this to impersonate people in comments. The comment signature looks different - badly formatted, "wrong" compared to the other comments, etc. You'd do a far better job with just changing your username. –  Anna Lear Nov 21 '12 at 6:49
@AnnaLear: Well, people as in mods. If you see the third post, changing your username to something like "yadoT" and then using the bidi character for impersonation can make the comment look like it comes from a mod (except under close inspection) on sites with uniform link formatting. –  Manishearth Nov 21 '12 at 6:51
I'm looking at this comment and it seems painfully obvious to me that it's not real. Not 100% sure if that's because there are others around it and/or I know what to look for, though. Either way, aside from causing some easily correctable verbal damage, it's not like someone can actually become a moderator this way. At worst, this seems like an annoyance. –  Anna Lear Nov 21 '12 at 6:54
@AnnaLear: That's on meta. See meta.physics.stackexchange.com/questions/389/formatting-sandbox/…, with some work you can make it look like i.stack.imgur.com/KvBl4.png. True, you can only impersonate a mod and do nothing else. It's not that big a problem :) –  Manishearth Nov 21 '12 at 6:57
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