Live data from Hacker News

Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

jacquesmattheij.com

61–70 of 276 posts

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#61
post #9

I am sort of baffled by all the ink being spilt about Twitter. I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,” and that there is even a process to ‘appeal’ a decision made ‘about a tweet.’ Anyway, meta-commentary aside, this blog post is something of a mystery. I don’t know whether the author of the post actually wrote the tweet in question and is somehow trying to get back onto Twitter, or if his account wa…

> reports on “tweets,” It's no different than reporting on anything else that someone says in a public forum. Since there are real consequences for what you say in a public forum, it is understandable that there is an appeals process.

> It's no different than reporting on anything else that someone says in a public forum.

Public forums, like in-person public forums, have much more context and many more barriers to being heard. In a supply-and-demand, signal-v.-noise sense, I find Twitter to be extremely low value, on the order of whatever the homeless fellow on my street shouts about (it’s usually extremely racist, homophobic, and disconnected from reality —- three traits his content shares with Twitter).

> Since there are real consequences for what you say in a public forum, it is understandable that there is an appeals process.

I don’t share the view that getting banned from Twitter is a ‘real consequence’ because I have never been on Twitter and yet, here I am, no worse for wear.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#62
Remember, not long ago even @jack's account was taken over: https://www.wired.com/story/jack-dorsey-twitter-hacked/

If you'd ever supplied a phone number as a backup-auth, then a SIM/phone-number-hijack would be a likely cause. (I think you'd see an email about a password reset in that case.)

But also any 3rd-party app that was ever granted posting access ª then itself compromised or misused – could also be to blame.

And of course the fact that any "suspicious" activity (even just a bouncy internet connection, in my experience) triggers a phone-number demand may solve some of Twitter's problems, while making things worse for the user, revealing to Twitter extra personal-info that:

• leaves you at risk of future phone-number-based account hijacks

• has on at least once occasion been abused by Twitter employees, secretly working for oppressive regimes, to target regime critics: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/technology/twitter-saudi-...

• has previously been leaked through a sketchy 3rd-party SMS provider to governments & law-enforcement & who-knows-who-else without Twitter even knowing: https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/09/twitter-2fa-text-privacy/

• has been used by Twitter for marketing purposes beyond the initial authorization purpose: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/twitter...

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#63
post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not so sure. If he really made that tweet (while drunk as you suggest) it would be better to just delete it and avoid the potential Streisand effect when the truth gets discovered, and I'm sure he's aware of that. Social media accounts have been hacked before, it's nothing new.

This particular tweet would be a fairly peculiar one to post on a hacked account.

It’s really surprising that his account would get banned for it in the first place.

> avoid the potential Streisand effect when the truth gets discovered

That’s never going to happen. Twitter would never publicly call him out even if the story was entirely fabricated, they just wouldn’t respond.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confused - was OP's account compromised, or not? I do not know. The tweet certainly looks like it was made by my account, but definitely not from this computer and definitely not using my password. I'm pretty precise about stuff like that and Twitter would be the least of my problems if my passwords were hacked. For now I am assuming either someone social engineered Twitter to change my password or a compromise…

> For now I am assuming either someone social engineered Twitter to change my password or a compromise of Twitter of some sort. How could you not notice your password being changed? I would think twitter would invalidate existing logins after a password change forcing you to log back in using the "new" password an your devices. Then again, I never used twitter.

Because that's the only thing that I can think of that makes sense.

Whether or not I can still log in I do not know because, as I wrote, I'm blocked from using Twitter, the only thing I keep getting now is a page where they want my phone number.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#65
post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

Ah...might you have any credible evidence of OP previously behaving in that way, either on Twitter or other social media platforms?

Or evidence that Twitter is extremely difficult to hack, to make theories that it was hacked non-credible?

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#66
post #28

Twitter suspended my twelve year old account for most of a year without explanation. Eight months later, my appeal worked and I got it back and was told it was an error in automated spam detection. Eight months! It was a 12 year old account. For those eight months I couldn't even get support to reply. Twitter has been garbage for years. The app is a great idea, I hope it gets fixed.

Same here - I was suddenly suspended for the following:

"We’re writing to let you know that your account has been suspended—and will remain suspended—due to multiple or severe violations of our platform manipulation rules"

I am a very boring person and there was zero chance I had done anything like this.

I was able to appeal ~5 times over 6 months and finally got my account reviewed by a person. They restored it and apologized that I was swept up in a spam cleanup. I don't tweet much but I am a daily user.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#67
post #9

I am sort of baffled by all the ink being spilt about Twitter. I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,” and that there is even a process to ‘appeal’ a decision made ‘about a tweet.’ Anyway, meta-commentary aside, this blog post is something of a mystery. I don’t know whether the author of the post actually wrote the tweet in question and is somehow trying to get back onto Twitter, or if his account wa…

>I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,”

Reporters love Twitter, so they spend a lot of time on it. If reporters spent a lot of time in D&D sessions, they would report about every typo in "Dragon" magazine.

Reporters love spending a lot of time on Twitter. It looks like work; it smells like work; but it is definitely not work.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can't log in. All I get is that screen over and over again. > Did you actually see it posted to your account? No.

No, I can't log in. All I get is that screen over and over again. So it must have already authenticated you, because it knows to show you that screen. It seems extremely odd that they would give you the option to delete the tweet, without actually giving you the ability. And if deleting the tweet was really enough, they could have simply deleted it for you and sent you a message that they did. It's probably an exploi…

> Wait, why not cancel your appeal, and try deleting the tweet on your own?

Because that might remove any forensic data that might allow me to figure out how this was done.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#69
post #11
post #9

I am sort of baffled by all the ink being spilt about Twitter. I still find it jarring that anyone reports on “tweets,” and that there is even a process to ‘appeal’ a decision made ‘about a tweet.’ Anyway, meta-commentary aside, this blog post is something of a mystery. I don’t know whether the author of the post actually wrote the tweet in question and is somehow trying to get back onto Twitter, or if his account wa…

From the author's account, it's clear to me that he didn't write the tweet.

I’m not sure by what evidence you came to this conclusion. The tweet exists. It exists with this person’s handle on it. This person claims that their account is not compromised.

From an Occam’s Razor standpoint, it doesn’t add up. I was looking for more evidence here, like “At that time I couldn’t possibly have tweeted, because it was the middle of the night and I have never tweeted at night,” or “The people who were the subject of the “@“ are not people I have ever interacted with, and the tweet itself doesn’t make sense in the context of the conversation.”

The general lack of detail and a lack of putting forth a theory of what did happen, besides “I support Ukraine so I might be getting silenced” (which seems unlikely — who doesn’t support Ukraine the West? It’s not an unpopular opinion. Is this guy Russian? And silenced by whom?) — it just plays like the song “It Wasn’t Me” by Rik Rok and Shaggy.

Re: Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

#70
I don't understand the tweet.

"@A @B @C Die on the job..."

Is that an incomplete news report that people have died?

Is it some kind of ridiculous imperative statement?

The ellipsis seems to indicate the former.

Either way it just seems like some garbage spam to be ignored.

Post reply on HN