Twitter is broken and no one seems to care.
Though I am definitely lapsed Catholic, there are still some aspects of the faith I strictly adhere to and one of those is giving things up for Lent. One year, I gave up cigarettes and it helped me kick the habit. Most years, it’s related to my diet, like cutting out snacks or soda.
This year, I decided I needed to give up Twitter. While I still need to use Twitter for my job, I didn’t need to tweet or like other’s tweets. It was becoming an increasingly infuriating endeavor. The platform has become overrun with bots, fake accounts, and bad faith actors.
My last tweet, sent on Feb. 25, was aimed at the wave of defeatism when it came to a 2nd term for Donald Trump, of which I had been previously guilty. I wrote:
“Too many anti-Trump folks lamely tweeting about how the debate is bad and we're gonna lose in November.
No, we are not. Stop saying that. We got this. We will come together after the convention and vote Republicans out of power. No more fatalism. We will win.”
That was my final tweet before Lent commenced. As the coronavirus spread across the country, I continued to use Twitter as a news source due to all the journalists and publications I follow. I did that until March 28, when I logged into my account and my feed was frozen. I refreshed several times until a blue message popped up to tell me I couldn’t do that because I was suspended.
Wait, what?
No Response from Twitter
At first, I was very confused. I had received no notification or email to even let me know why I was suspended. There was no explanation. There was no reason given for the suspension. Because I hadn’t tweeted in over a month at that point, the suspension was even more dumbfounding.
When you’re suspended, there is only a basic form that you fill out to “appeal” your suspension. I didn’t know what I was even appealing, but I filled out the form and let them know that I think I was suspended by mistake.
Two days passed and I received no insight from Twitter. I did get a notification on March 31 that an account I had reported was found to be in violation of Twitter rules. The irony was crippling, as Twitter was thanking me for identifying an account that needed to be suspended while I was also suspended.
It provided a clue, possibly. “Ahhh,” I thought. Maybe Twitter had thought I was spam since I had gone over a month without tweeting but had continued to report accounts that clearly broke Twitter’s rules. I filled out the form again and let them know that I was, indeed, a real person who had given up tweeting for Lent.
Then I became angry. A week passed without any response. Twitter provides no email support or phone number to call. It’s just the same damn form. There was no more information to glean. I had been suspended without knowing why. I could not get a response.
This brought up so many questions, which I have sent to Twitter’s PR team in hopes of clarity:
As if to prove my point, a report came out last night as I was editing this piece that 60 percent of the misinformation related to coronavirus resides on Twitter. It’s not a giant leap to make the assumption that some people who have died due to the virus was a result of misinformation they read on the platform.
Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?
The only way to truly affect change from corporations in a capitalistic society is a boycott. We’ve seen that used effectively over and over during the Trump era, as boycotts of companies that support his regime of racist incompetence has led to change.
Yet the two corporations most responsible for the Trump era -- Twitter and Facebook - emerge unscathed from boycotts, despite the vast majority of its users being negatively impacted by Republicans. I deleted Facebook soon after the 2016 election after learning they helped Trump win and were stealing my data. The “delete Facebook” movement has picked up very little steam.
Likewise, Twitter was the epicenter for mountains of misinformation during the 2016 election, yet it remains the preferred social media platform of choice for journalists. This is especially confounding because Twitter’s ability to cut out the media from government and business officials from reaching the public is a huge reason why journalism is in such a precarious position from a financial perspective.
Simply put, we don’t need Twitter or Facebook. We have smartphones that allow us to connect with family and friends and colleagues in myriad ways. Email exists for a reason. So do text messages and phone calls.
Yet, too many remain slavishly devoted to these platforms because they are fooled into believing that is their only way to connect with society at large. It’s not.
We can be better. We should be better. Until Twitter and/or Facebook cares about our privacy and actively roots out misinformation, we are doomed.
Which is to say, we are doomed indefinitely.
I have reached out to Twitter’s PR team for comment on my situation and will update this post if/when they respond
Follow me on Twitter (lol)
This year, I decided I needed to give up Twitter. While I still need to use Twitter for my job, I didn’t need to tweet or like other’s tweets. It was becoming an increasingly infuriating endeavor. The platform has become overrun with bots, fake accounts, and bad faith actors.
My last tweet, sent on Feb. 25, was aimed at the wave of defeatism when it came to a 2nd term for Donald Trump, of which I had been previously guilty. I wrote:
“Too many anti-Trump folks lamely tweeting about how the debate is bad and we're gonna lose in November.
No, we are not. Stop saying that. We got this. We will come together after the convention and vote Republicans out of power. No more fatalism. We will win.”
That was my final tweet before Lent commenced. As the coronavirus spread across the country, I continued to use Twitter as a news source due to all the journalists and publications I follow. I did that until March 28, when I logged into my account and my feed was frozen. I refreshed several times until a blue message popped up to tell me I couldn’t do that because I was suspended.
Wait, what?
No Response from Twitter
At first, I was very confused. I had received no notification or email to even let me know why I was suspended. There was no explanation. There was no reason given for the suspension. Because I hadn’t tweeted in over a month at that point, the suspension was even more dumbfounding.
When you’re suspended, there is only a basic form that you fill out to “appeal” your suspension. I didn’t know what I was even appealing, but I filled out the form and let them know that I think I was suspended by mistake.
Two days passed and I received no insight from Twitter. I did get a notification on March 31 that an account I had reported was found to be in violation of Twitter rules. The irony was crippling, as Twitter was thanking me for identifying an account that needed to be suspended while I was also suspended.
Then I became angry. A week passed without any response. Twitter provides no email support or phone number to call. It’s just the same damn form. There was no more information to glean. I had been suspended without knowing why. I could not get a response.
This brought up so many questions, which I have sent to Twitter’s PR team in hopes of clarity:
- Why is there no direct email or phone number for Twitter support?
- How can someone be suspended without being told why?
- Is 13 days without a single response typical or acceptable?
As if to prove my point, a report came out last night as I was editing this piece that 60 percent of the misinformation related to coronavirus resides on Twitter. It’s not a giant leap to make the assumption that some people who have died due to the virus was a result of misinformation they read on the platform.
Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?
The only way to truly affect change from corporations in a capitalistic society is a boycott. We’ve seen that used effectively over and over during the Trump era, as boycotts of companies that support his regime of racist incompetence has led to change.
Yet the two corporations most responsible for the Trump era -- Twitter and Facebook - emerge unscathed from boycotts, despite the vast majority of its users being negatively impacted by Republicans. I deleted Facebook soon after the 2016 election after learning they helped Trump win and were stealing my data. The “delete Facebook” movement has picked up very little steam.
Likewise, Twitter was the epicenter for mountains of misinformation during the 2016 election, yet it remains the preferred social media platform of choice for journalists. This is especially confounding because Twitter’s ability to cut out the media from government and business officials from reaching the public is a huge reason why journalism is in such a precarious position from a financial perspective.
Simply put, we don’t need Twitter or Facebook. We have smartphones that allow us to connect with family and friends and colleagues in myriad ways. Email exists for a reason. So do text messages and phone calls.
Yet, too many remain slavishly devoted to these platforms because they are fooled into believing that is their only way to connect with society at large. It’s not.
We can be better. We should be better. Until Twitter and/or Facebook cares about our privacy and actively roots out misinformation, we are doomed.
Which is to say, we are doomed indefinitely.
I have reached out to Twitter’s PR team for comment on my situation and will update this post if/when they respond
Follow me on Twitter (lol)
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