The Return of the Fail Whale

Previously on “When Twitter is gone”

It is now 00:36am and still no response from Delbius to this very important question.

In the meanwhile I am still getting DMs from people that I have followed in the past that have automatic replies setup.

Delbius answered to me about this:

When you were suspended, you’d disappeared; when restored, their service thinks you’re following for the first time.

I really love it when computer systems “think”.

And I am still getting DMs from people i started to follow in February.

And Delbius is probably sleeping.

But I was wrong.(Something that came as a surprised since everyone knows that I am never wrong)

I had sent a Twitter to Delbius with a link to my previous post as a peace offer. She read it. And she tweeted me back:

I’ve supplied the text that got you suspended in the ticket. Thanks.

I would note that the variant was trend hashtag spamming, not the spamming of a hashtag. There’s a difference.

My heart started to race! Really! I was finally going to  know what I had done that got me a suspended account, a serious warning and a very very very (really!) unpleasant sensation.

I loggged in at Twitter’s ZenDesk and here is what I found:

You sent out an update that contained the text:
“Check out new works and new tracks @ Please share and participate! #iranelection #humanrights)”
Obviously, the new works and new tracks were not, in fact, relevant to #iranelection and #humanrights which resulted in you being suspended.
While I was amused by your write-up, I would point out that having been suspended for a valid reason and then being unsuspended, patience regarding a follow up, particularly in light of us reserving a month for investigation is generally appreciated.

The first thing I noticed? There was no link to the tweet in question.

I read everything again.

And again. And again.

Then I realised why I was reading it over and over again: I wanted Twitter to be right. I wanted that all that I had felt and gone trough to be really my fault. I wanted to read on those lines that I had made an enormous mistake.

And so I read it again.

Some strange sensation on my brain was making me listen to a voice that kept repeating: “They were wrong! They were wrong!”

I tried to hush the voice away by reading it once again. And then it slapped me, the voice in my brain.

TWITTER WAS WRONG in suspending my account! George W. Bush wrong, Kim Il Jong wrong, Gordon Brown wrong!!!! Bananarama Milli Vanilli Modern Talking Samantha Fox WRONG! (If you don’t recognise any of these names probably you should be in bed by now and not reading this blog… Move along nothing to read here)

I shouted “They must be kidding me!!” but it was not really me, it was that voice that had taken over me.

Deep inside I still wanted Twitter to be right (This is how much I love Twitter)

I took a deep breath and returned to the Zendesk (For some reason they have called it Zendesk):

Del,
Please don’t think that I don’t appreciate the readiness with which you brought my account back to life. But I have to contest the suspension.
Here are my reasons:
The “new works and tracks” referred on that tweet pertain to the Artists for Freedom/Music for Freedom project that is a partner of United4Iran.
I am one of the founders of that project. This is a non-profit organization that recently got the contribution of Dj Spooky. Everyone working on the project is not being pay and is doing the project on their own free time.
All works are released under a Creative Commons License so people can share them and use them. (specially on the upcoming Global Day of Action July 25th).
The “Participate” “share bits refer to the call for action we are making, with the support of Soundcloud, Indaba and Creative Commons that wants to have people around the world record the word  Freedom in their own language and send it to us: the objective is to have a one hour long recording available for free download to be played at rallies that have Human Rights, Freedom of Speech and, at this time, the situation in Iran in mind.
I will leave you all the relevant URLs so you can verify the veracity of what I am telling you.
Arists for Freedom: http://artists4freedom.net
Music for Freedom: http://music.artists4freedom.net
Design for Freedom: http://design.artists4freedom.net

I read what I had written over and over again. I just wanted to make it clear. Waterford Crystal clear.

And then I hit send.

And  told Delbius that I had sent a reply via Twitter.

At this moment I really wanted an apology from Twitter via Delbius. I think that I had deserved an apology since I had been wrongly suspended, my night and morning had been a nightmare and lots of things were not done because my account had been suspended due to a mistake: human or machine caused, I don’t know.

But it was a mistake.

I am more than aware that lots of spam bots have started to use the trending hashtags and that had to be stopped. I understand that. But when a legitimate tweet is included then something is wrong with that system.

I only had to wait for 3 minutes to get the notice on my mailbox that I had got a reply from Delbius.

As your account is not currently suspended, there’s not much to contest. We’ll take a look at the links at some point in the future, but no other accounts are currently suspended due to sending out that update.

I didn’t have to read this again to react! Imagine Bill Compton meets Eric meets Godrick meets Sylar all focused on a huge “What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?”

At this point in time, the lights of all windows in all of  the  buildings  around me lit up. Not really. But it would’ve been nice.

I could not believe this. Really I couldn’t. There was not much to contest? There was a lot to contest! Specially because my account was now a stained account. Remember that “if this behavior occurs again, the account will be permanently suspended.” ????

I do! I will probably have nightmares for the rest of my life about it.

I had to reply. I really had to reply. I had to take another deep breath. Make that two and a lucky strike.

Ice tea and another lucky strike.

Deep breath.

Another lucky strike just for luck.

Deep breath.

Back to the Zendesk:

The only reason why I am worried about this is the fact that you stated that if I do something like this again my account “will be permanently suspended”.
I am guessing that some kind of flag exists on my account regarding this kind of behaviour that, as i explained above, I consider to be an error.

Being 2 days away from the Global Action Day on July 25th it is more than sure that I will use those hashtags again regarding updates on the several projects we are running regarding the event.
Please advise me on the best way to make this without running into an impromptu account suspension.

I am sorry to waste your time with this but, at this end of the line, it is something really important.

Again i checked and re-checked. Waterford Crystal for some reason came to mind. And water lots of water.

…

…

It is now 48h more or less since my account got suspended.

I am still getting DMs from months ago.

I still didn’t get any advice or information how I should go on Tweeting and using the hashtags.

Truth be told, my account didn’t  get suspended so far.

But to live with that fear is like having  this sensation that at any time, any place a huge fail whale is going to fall down from the sky and smash me out of Twitter forever.

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