arguing with twitter

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Hello,

My account, @Benladen ( http://twitter.com/Benladen ) was suspended today.
I'm not sure why. Having looked over the rules a number of times, I'm still
only able to venture broad and unconvincing guesses. The only thing I can
imagine is @mark_yudof thought I was being too rude to him and accused me of
misuse of the reply system, which if it is really that big of a deal I will
stop doing that of course. I can also imagine him trumping up charges of
impersonation against me, which would be blatantly untrue.

Other than that, I can assure you that I am not a bot nor am I spamming a
product or service. I've just been a person interested in using twitter as a
tool for thinking, discussing, agitating, and some other stuff. I hope that
this can get resolved fairly quickly as being without the service is, to my
mind, a major detriment to me.

Thanks very much for your time,
Ben

Jan-31 2010 06:19 pm.



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Hello,

After a lot of reflection, I'm still unsure as to what exactly got my account suspended. I still think the mostly likely course of events was that I was reported by @mark_yudof, because it would be a bit of a strange coincidence if someone who I know has gotten accounts suspended before (ie @UCPresident) for (presumably) Impersonation would personally contact me* just a few days before I myself got suspended. To contextualize this a bit, I myself am a student of the University of California of which Mark Yudof is the President. As President he has treated this public university like a corporation, by helping to create an atmosphere of constant economic terror in order to motivate cutting "wasteful" expenses (which boils down to minimum wage workers' hours, professors without tenure, and the Humanities) and funneling money into construction projects and boosting the Universities credit rating. So I hold a bit of hostility towards him. I saw Twitter as, in part, a way to express this hostility in a way which was simultaneously benign and productive - like siphoning out venom, so that I can have a clear head when I try to capture the snake that bit me.

I am, of course, willing to forgo this type of criticism if it is forbidden in this medium. As a student and a person who tries to think, I have found Twitter to be unparalleled in its usefulness, not only in finding interesting things to read but also in communicating with people with interesting things to say.

Thanks very much for your time,
Ben

Feb-04 2010 09:46 pm.



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Hello

You were suspended for sending fake retweets on your account.

Thanks

Coati

Feb-10 2010 12:50 pm.



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Hello,

Thank you for clearing up at least the reason. I admit that I did do that.
Is there no way for me to get my account reinstated now? After all, there's
no rule against fake retweeting as such - to me, the closest thing is
probably,

"*Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service
in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others"

which I think for a number of reasons it is clear that I was doing no such
thing. On the one hand, ever since the introduction of the retweet button,
the format "RT @username " is something that is inherently suspect,
and this is something I was assuming from the people who read my tweets.
Which, I think, is a fair assumption, based on the fact that I had been
critical of the account I was retweeting for a long time before I began
doing that, and furthermore the fake retweets were generally so outrageous
in themselves that they couldn't but have been taken as only farcically
attributed to the account in question.

If I'm mistaken and am misinterpreting one of the rules, I would appreciate
knowing where I am mistaken. However, without any sort of warning, or even
communication from the account that reported me (barring what I could only
construe as a tacit condoning of the fake retweeting, namely a Direct
Message in which the account continued some lyrics which I had jokingly
attributed to the account earlier) I don't have any strong idea of what it
is that I'm being punished for. If my account is reinstated, I promise that
I will not continue to post fake retweets. I don't really know what else I
can say.

Thanks very much,
Ben

Feb-10 2010 04:35 pm.



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Hello,

Here's an example of someone else producing a fake retweet,

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff110/Benla/perezhiltonfakeretweet.jpg (the account @zacefron has sent no tweets out at all)(http://twitter.com/PerezHilton/status/9091643588 and http://twitter.com/zacefron)

and I hardly think anyone could argue that @PerezHilton should be banned from twitter for that. And his fake retweet is very blatantly an attempt to mislead people into thinking it is true, whereas mine aren't.

It is hard for me to see this as not being punishment for being critical of a man who is more powerful than I am. If I hadn't been critical of his politics previous to fake retweeting, I would have never been reported (as evidenced by the people who have fake retweeted @mark_yudof since my suspension and have received no penalty), or if my fake retweets had been becoming to the account, or if they were of another account who was not "Verified."

I point this out because the rules, as they are written and as they are enforced elsewhere on the site, were never broken by me. If there is another rule, which is that fake retweets are forbidden for any reason whatsoever, I will gladly respect that from now on (even if its enforcement is uneven, as a rule like that would have to be). Losing this account has caused me a lot of distress, and I apologize if my messages are too long or too frequent, but this is important to me and I would like to have it resolved as quickly as possible.

Thank you,
Ben

Feb-14 2010 03:10 am.



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Hello

I have unsuspended your account. If we receive another report of violation of our terms of service your account will be suspended irreversibly.

Coati

Feb-16 2010 12:35 pm.