The Ultimate Fail Whale

It happened yesterday around this time. I was not even Tweeting. The “Artists for Freedom” project, the upcoming releases on PublicSpaces Lab (did you check the new site already? It rocks!!)  and the day to day of stuff happening at PublicSpaces Sonic Environments have kept me really busy and pushing my limits in what comes to Zs-time and yesterday was one of those days.

When I went to login into Twitter (See how busy I was that I was not even logged in?) Destroy Twitter wouldn’t accept my credentials.

Went to the web interface, got logged in and ….. BOOOM!!!

My account had been suspended. It is impossible to describe the next minutes. Logged out, logged in again. I could not understand it. But the fact was that my account had been suspended.

Google searches, with the help of Cat,  brought no hope: Accounts could be suspended for several reasons during 30 days. Other searches reported random accounts being suspended due to a database error. In my mind the thought “Up to 30 days without Tweeting?! This is going to be a major technology cold turkey!!!!!”

I was so nervous that if it wasn’t for Cat I would never had found the link at the so-called “zendesk” of Twitter. I reported my problem, got a ticket number, then one  e-mail from Twitter teaching me how to activate my mobile phone.

Some minutes later another mail from Twitter, a copy of my report and telling me that someone at Twitter was responsible for my ticket. A twitter search and there she was: Delbius.

There is something really cruel and double sided about being “accused” of something you are almost sure you didn’t do:

This was how I felt:

While most of the people  I interact with on Twitter  keep complaining about being massively followed by make-more-money-nude-girls-get-more-followers-i-want-you-in-my-bed-your-ticket-to-a-dream-job spam  bots, my account had been suspended. Of course that Delbius became the focus of all my “rage”.

Of course this was not the Delbiu’s fault, the person. But, believe me, when you are so much into Twitter for personal and professional reasons, like I am,  to have your account suspended just turns anyone into an irrational sentient being.

So back to the Twitter Zen Desk Interaction:

Twitter said:

If you are suspended, it’s most likely for one or more of these reasons::
User Abuse
* a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
* aggressive following
* imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
* misuse of the reply feature
* updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
* updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
* updates consist of updates poached from others’ timelines, passed off as one’s own
Technical Abuse
* updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
* a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
* an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster

And I replied:

Hello Twitter Support,

Regarding my account @fjfonseca :

If you check my timeline you will see content and interaction with other Twitter users in a balanced manner.

I have not been reported as spam ever, I have a number of followers that is bigger than the number of people I am following and I try to keep my followers list clean of spam bots.

My links do not point to any malware or phishing sites. Actually you can see by the number of mentions I get that my content is RT lots of time.

For all of these reasons I do believe that my account has been suspended in error.

Tick tack, tick tack, tick tack, tick tack…

Nothing, nanoseconds after nanoseconds no e-mail reply. Miliseconds went by and nothing.

I was checking my mail every 2 seconds. In the meanwhile Cat was looking for my Tweets that were gone forever.

Yes, when you get your account suspended you cease to exist. The only evidence that you were ever there are the mentions that other users write. Blade Runner came to mind “All those tweets will be lost, like tears in the rain“.

Still no mail. At Delbius profile on Twitter a hint that she was sleeping. Sleeping!!!!!! Sleeping!!!! Sleeping while my account was suspended, gone forever. (Yes melodrama was kicking in at this time).

So there I was, pissed off, angry at Tiwtter, at Delbius at…

Mail Message.

Paul aka Dj Spooky, yes THAT Dj Spooky, had just reached the general mailbox of Artists for Freedom wanting to know about the possibility of giving us one unreleased track for the “Music for Freedom” project.

REWIND!!! What? Yes, Dj Spooky writing us to offer an unreleased track. And me with my Twitter account suspended. Not that I needed it for anything but I wanted it ACTIVE!!!

I wanted to Tweet this! I wanted to Tweet about lots of things! And my account was suspended. And Delbius was sleeping. Once again my thoughts on how useful it would be to be a vampire, sometimes, crossed my mind. (You can now sing the True Blood main theme)

Fast Forward. Some hours later. After setting up the Dj Spooky track at Music for Freedom and writing to my guys at PublicSpaces about the Twitter Gate, went to sleep for 2 hours. I could not really sleep. I know I have slept but it felt like I didn’t. It was strange.

Twitter should think about making a withdrawal drug available worldwide for suspended account users. It would be a success. Maybe this is the way to monetize Twitter. Who knows?

My account was still suspended. 8am in the morning and my account was still suspended and Delbius was still sleeping. I decided to ignore it. Had lots on my mailbox to take care of.

Meanwhile in Barcelona…

In Barcelona, Jordi was starting his day at the office and decided on his own that there was a limit to everything, being everything the fact that my account was suspended. And so he decided to ask everyone at the PublicSpaces Lab time line to start ReTweeting a message to Delbius asking her to put my account back online. It was like a wave but Delbius still wouldn’t answer.

I started to get e-mails from people asking me what had happened, giving me advice (open a new account and we will help you get your followers back), asking if there was something they could do.

But there was nothing anyone could do unless they knew where Delbius lived and woke her up.

After a one hour and a half phone interview for the “WhosWho” Directory I still had no Twitter account. Yes, it will be one of the topics of my interview when they publish their new issue of the quarterly magazine:

- “What brings you stress in your day to day?”

- “Getting my Twitter account suspended” (and 15m describing the whole process)

At 3:40pm the first sign from Delbius:

@PublicSpacesLab Please don’t ever ask for a RT on a suspended account. I’ll look when I can.

Oh! Oh! Delbius was mad!!! And rightly so.

@PublicSpacesLab Perhaps you are unaware, but all you have done is clog my replies tab and inconvenience other users trying to get help.

Delbius also sent other messages similar to these to Fernando Mateus, that made the mistake of not including “RT @PublicSpaceslab” on his tweets. (I am sure we will correct this next time).

Funny or not, depends on what side you are, while Delbius was tweeting  the PublicSpacesLab account other people kept ReTweeting the original message.

Some seconds later my account was back. Back but with a warning:

Your account was correctly suspended for hashtag spam — spamming a trend with an unrelated update. I’ve restored the account; however, if this behavior occurs again, the account will be permanently suspended.

Additionally, please ensure that your company never again requests retweets regarding a suspended account. One request is sufficient. Doing so in the future can lead to the username being filtered.

Hashtag Spam?! Excuse me??? Hashtag Spam? Me that uses hashtags like “#whateverhappenedtoprettyhashtags” and “#ibetthatyouwillhavetoreadthismorethanoncetounderstandwhatitsays”?

Me? A proud member of the #hashtagmafia and the European Capo for the #hashtagmafia #family?

(What is this #hashtagmafia thing, you ask? It is a group of people at Twitter that take pride in coming up with original hashtags.)

To be accusing me of using a trend hashtag to get my content noticed is likely to accuse Al Capone of being a CIA agent.

So I went back to my ticket and wrote:

Hello Del,
First of all I thank you for the swift resolution of this situation.
Secondly I apologise for the calls to action from my team and others but this suspension was a surprise to everyone.

Could you please tell me what hashtag was used with unrelated content? I am not aware of doing it on purpose. Maybe you can point me to the Tweet in question.

It would help me know what it was and not to commit the same mistake again.

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.

(Click here for the second episode)

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