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Twitter blocked my account for a tweet I did not make

jacquesmattheij.com

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

#261

Post by sneak »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
sneak wrote: 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.

Wow that's bad news.

I couldn't even view my DMs to get the usernames of people I only contact via Twitter, it cut me off from my friends during the pandemic.

That and the censorship led me to deleting my account.

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

#262

Post by djur »

fivre wrote: post #137
jacquesm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Twitter supposed to know that the Tweet was made by the OP or was a compromised Tweet? For starters: it would be interesting to see what IP address the tweet was made from, whether or not it was preceded by a password change or contact with Twitter support to turn the account over to someone else. > When something is egregious what should Twitter do if it doesn't have resources to investigate whether the twe…

>> How is Twitter supposed to know that the Tweet was made by the OP or was a compromised Tweet? > For starters: it would be interesting to see what IP address the tweet was made from, whether or not it was preceded by a password change or contact with Twitter support to turn the account over to someone else. >> When something is egregious what should Twitter do if it doesn't have resources to investigate whether the…

Yeah, the Twitter policy here is 1) ask the user to delete the bad tweet 2) tell the user to change their password if they think they've been hijacked 3) internally investigate any credible claims of a security issue on their side. They have zero interest in allowing users to participate in any such investigation.

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

#263

Post by wfhordie »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #166
david927 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a 15-year-old account here, I can verify that Jacques is in a special, small group of members of this community with recognized user names -- based on a long and impeccable record of substantial knowledge and respected expertise.

Counterpoint: mulch your account every so often. It fights the development of cliques and forces people to focus on the message, not the messenger. And it sharpens your own need to make a good point, rather than posting as $KNOWN_USER and waiting for the clicks. I've done this roughly every ~1-2 years or so since I joined about a decade ago, so my ~8-9k of aggregated karma is spread across multiple accounts. On that…

I do this about once a week. It keeps me from caring about points. If people can't see past my green username status, then it's time to move on.

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

#264

Post by naikrovek »

jacquesm wrote: post #157
bink wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because deleting it would remove the one bit of evidence that this happened and may well wipe out the data that would allow establishing how this was done. You say you've been around awhile but you don't seem to understand that there is not such thing as permanent deletion when it comes to social media. "Deleting" the post in this case would only mark it as deleted and remove it from people's feeds. There is no des…

I would not make any assumptions about implementation details to which I have no access.

> I would not make any assumptions about implementation details to which I have no access.

you've made the assumption that a deletion actually deletes, when there is near 100% chance that it doesn't, and there is clearly a 100% chance that Twitter has done all the investigation they are going to do.

this isn't a murder investigation, it's a flipping tweet. delete it and move on with your life.

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

#265

Post by antifa »

MisterTea wrote: post #56
jacquesm wrote: post #21

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.

> How could you not notice your password being changed?

I noticed that a horrifying number of services don't inform the old email address that an account's email was changed. I trust very few services to keep me fully informed about my accounts these days.

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

#266

Post by rosndo »

filoleg wrote: post #260
ziddoap wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe it is extremely unlikely they just got drunk and tweeted "Die on the job..." Is it not even more unlikely that Twitter itself was hacked, just so someone could post this tweet as OP? I agree it is an uncharacteristic tweet on the OPs behalf, but... If we are to believe OPs claim that there is "no possible way" their machine and/or account have been hacked... My next step isn't thinking "Well, all of Twitt…

> Is it not even more unlikely that Twitter itself was hacked, just so someone could post this tweet as OP? Oh, if that's the point of the argument, then I totally agree with you. I strongly doubt that Twitter itself was hacked. It makes way more sense that someone else simply got access to OP's account one way or another. Maybe a compromised device, maybe a compromised network, maybe even just a regular account take…

Twitter wasn’t hacked. OPs twitter account wasn’t hacked. OPs computer wasn’t hacked.

OP wrote this tweet and forgot. When read in context, it’s perfectly in line with pro-Ukraine views previously expressed on his account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31240589

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

#267

Post by rosndo »

bell-cot wrote: post #65
rosndo wrote: 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?

As it turns out, when read in context this tweet is perfectly in line with many others on his account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31240589

OP wrote the tweet and forgot, then got pissed when this was pointed out to him. I think we’ve all seen this with elderly relatives.

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

#268

Post by bambax »

jacquesm wrote: post #180
gorhill wrote: post #155

I tried to find a tweet which would be a best match if the subject tweet had been a reply to another tweet, here is a good candidate: https://twitter.com/Johnrigsby128/status/1521195277033648129

I can't see what it says there (still get the stupid 'phone number required' screen).

If you log off or browse from a private window you can see tweets.

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

#269

Post by bambax »

bryced wrote: post #200
jacquesm wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok interesting, but within that context the tweet at least makes some sense but does not call for someone to die explicitly... it just gets weirder...

Doesn't seem very mysterious. When taken in context it looks like an innocuous tweet but to a twitter censorship algorithm that isn't aware of the context it looks like a command for someone to die.

Seconded. It happened to me a while ago; I said in French (in a reply to something): "que les antivax meurent n'est pas étonnant", which means "that the antivaxxers would die isn't surprising" but which was apparently interpreted by Twitter as a death wish on the antivaxxers (it could indeed sound like one if you ignored the last part of the sentence).

The tweet was immediately flagged, I believe by an automatic Twitter system; I learned that it's best to not use the word "die" in any language and any context, because the "AI" systems are incredibly limited and stupid, and they flag anything that may be construed in a negative way.

Twitter then asked me to delete the tweet, but what it didn't tell me is that this would be an admission of guilt. I got suspended for a number of days, but I took this opportunity to quit Twitter. I didn't delete my account but didn't log back in. One of the best decisions I ever made.

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

#270

Post by bambax »

InitialLastName wrote: post #55
rosndo wrote: post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

OP is @jacquesm here; this is the internet so long cons are always possible, but he's one of the more credible people around here. Additionally, the tweet in question is pretty far out of character.

> the tweet in question is pretty far out of character

No, it's a pun! As originally pointed out here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31240589

the offending tweet was likely made as a reply (the @ match). The original tweet said "Some Russian soldiers say they are given a weapon and sent straight in. Learn on the job."

The pun was that Russian soldiers are not learning on the job, they are dying on the job. It's a completely normal observation to make.

The ellipsis at the end also indicate a pun/correction. An actual death wish would more likely end with exclamation points.

But the Twitter algorithms misinterpreted the pun as a death wish, and the OP somehow didn't remember making it. This sounds like the most likely explanation.

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