diff --git a/lib/twitter_ebooks/bot.rb b/lib/twitter_ebooks/bot.rb
index 9526cac..b7596e8 100644
--- a/lib/twitter_ebooks/bot.rb
+++ b/lib/twitter_ebooks/bot.rb
@@ -2,6 +2,14 @@
 require 'twitter'
 require 'rufus/scheduler'
 
+# Monkeypatch hack to fix upstream dependency issue
+# https://github.com/sferik/twitter/issues/709
+class HTTP::URI
+  def port
+    443 if self.https?
+  end
+end
+
 module Ebooks
   class ConfigurationError < Exception
   end
@@ -267,8 +275,6 @@ module Ebooks
         if blacklisted?(ev.user.screen_name)
           log "Blocking blacklisted user @#{ev.user.screen_name}"
           @twitter.block(ev.user.screen_name)
-          # we don't want to reply to blacklisted users, so return
-          return
         end
 
         # Avoid responding to duplicate tweets
diff --git a/twitter_ebooks.gemspec b/twitter_ebooks.gemspec
index 40ea64e..3d7ea22 100644
--- a/twitter_ebooks.gemspec
+++ b/twitter_ebooks.gemspec
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Gem::Specification.new do |gem|
   gem.add_development_dependency 'pry-byebug'
   gem.add_development_dependency 'yard'
 
-  gem.add_runtime_dependency 'twitter', '= 5.14'
+  gem.add_runtime_dependency 'twitter', '~> 5.15'
   gem.add_runtime_dependency 'rufus-scheduler'
   gem.add_runtime_dependency 'gingerice'
   gem.add_runtime_dependency 'htmlentities'