> Him being abusive to the moderation team
His comment was angry, but not "abusive".
> (who likelier than not have nothing to do with the team that built the AI moderation system)
No: they do not get some free pass here from the moral implications of this system they have chosen to be a part of. I have at lease some sympathy for the idea that some of these people might really really have needed a job or have gotten caught up in a system they didn't realize was evil until it is too late... but, now they work for the system and the power differential is clearly skewed in their direction with them being the judicial arm of this ridiculously broken enforcement mechanism created by Twitter: they have power over this user that this user will never have over them, and so the onus of being reasonable is entirely on them.
> is completely uncalled for, though
No: it was quite directly "called for". Twitter did something ridiculous here, and they frankly at this point are doing it knowingly, and the people who work for Twitter are actively deciding to be part of Twitter's process.
If you go around as a bully kicking people in the shin because "no one said I can't" even though you know you are being a complete jerk about it, and then one of the people you kick has the gall to get angry, that anger should be expected and I'd even go so far to say it is justified.
> and deserves punishment
Even if this were true--and it is not--we should then be faced with the reality that
that is a separate issue; and so, if Twitter, wanted to be honest here they should accept the appeal and then separately reinstate the user's account. However, remember: if we believe that being angry at someone who wronged you is somehow wrong (which again: it is not) and we believe (due to your insistence) that this potential customer service agent (we don't actually have proof there was a person who looked at the appeal) was horribly wronged by the user (even though they weren't), then the action of punishing the user by lying about the result of their appeal for sending a slightly-frustrated response is yet another situation where we should claim that the person wronged should turn the other cheek, no? So your own logic actually also comes to the conclusion this customer support person should be punished... I might personally suggest--for the sake of irony--being immediately fired and then judging their amount of severance pay based on how friendly they are to the HR representative (who, obviously, despite being the arm of this decision will be cleared of culpability due to having merely chosen to be part of a labyrinthine bureaucracy instead of directly taking the action) after they are given the news.
Look: I used to actively do customer service. And did I get some people who were angry? Yup. Did it sometimes piss me off? Of course! Hell: I will even admit to occasionally getting into arguments with users that scaled on how annoying they were being.
But, at the end of the day, I didn't let that decide whether I was going to give someone the refund they asked for or to fix their account in whatever way was needed. It might have limited the "extra" friendly help or random benefits I sometimes threw people I would directly interact with, but if they were legitimately wronged they deserved legitimate compensation and their anger at me had to be contextualized by its cause: that my software had wronged them. If anything, it felt a bit good to just hit the refund button and then ignore them forever.