This morning my Twitter account @liturgy (http://twitter.com/liturgy) “has been suspended due to strange activity.” Well I always knew that many (most?) people regard liturgy as a “strange activity”!!! Apparently suspension can last up to thirty days. I have nearly 14,000 followers who regularly comment how they find my tweeting of prayers, quotes, reflections, etc. enriching of their day. Strange activity indeed.
Here was this morning’s strange activity that led to my suspension:
- A person in China with seven followers had sent me a tweet. I tried to follow back, but was told I couldn’t add more followers at this stage.
- I sent a tweet that July 6 is the feast of Thomas More.
- I sent a tweet pointing to the Straight Outta Compline fun video
- I unfollowed some I had been following who were not following me back to make room to follow my Chinese follower and some others
- I received a tweet from a high school student about Thomas More – the name of their school, how they celebrate on a different date, and how next year will be a big celebration for them
- I tried to tweet back to him and… was told I was “not authorised” to do that and that my account “”has been suspended due to strange activity”
UPDATE 28:08 NZ time: I’m back on twitter! No explanation (not even an auto email or autoDM! of explanation yet). I appear to have lost 6 followers & appear to be following 272 people less than when I was suspended. All else appears fine.
Weirdness — good thing I don’t have many twitter friends, I guess
I believe it was the unfollowing of some to follow others that got you suspended. I read an article recently that stated that the twitter police were coming down hard on this behavior.
I think this is just a twitter glitch that will be (hopefully) be resolved. Both of my accounts were suspended this afternoon. I hope you filed service tickets with Twitter Support. If you do a Twitter Search, there are hundreds of messages today about people’s accounts being suspended and each one trying to guess why. I think it’s just a glitch and all will be well shortly.
Oh no!! This has got to be a mistake!
I will really miss your tweets they do enrich my day! I hope it’s straightemed out soon. Until then I’ll be visiting here. Thank goodness for blogs!
Hope you’re tweeting again soon!
Grace & Peace,
Jan
Hey, Bosco. The tweetlater folks say that twitter has been hit by something they call a spam cloud, leading to lots of suspended accounts. You should ask twitter to unsuspend you. They seem to be working on it and are giving people back their accounts.
Here’s the link to the tweetlater blog post: http://www.tweetlaterblog.com/twitter-account-suspensions/
Trying to get the word out so people will know. Several good accounts have been suspended. We are following and trying to keep up but we hope and pray that God intervenes soon. Miss your tweets. Let us know on FB if there is more we can do.
I have just received this auto reply from twitter after I appealed their suspending of my account (if you follow me on twitter, you know how much I love those autoDMs and auto-replies… NOT) – my responses here in capitals (I have not sent these replies to twitter)
“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 HOW DOES ONE KNOW WHO BLOCKS ME? IS THERE AN AP FOR THIS? I ONCE WENT TO A PRIEST’S ACCOUNT & TRIED TO FOLLOW HIM & FOUND HE HAD BLOCKED ME – THEN I NOTICED HIS TWEETS WOULD MAKE Genghis Khan LOOK LIKE AN OVERLY WET LIBERAL 🙂
* aggressive following I FOLLOW PEOPLE WHO LOOK TO BE INTERESTED IN SPIRITUALITY AND WORSHIP; I FOLLOW BACK MOST PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW ME. IS THAT CLASSED AS “AGGRESSIVE”?
* imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following LAST CHECK I WAS FOLLOWING 13,702 AND 13,917 WERE FOLLOWING ME
* misuse of the reply feature UMMM… LIKE USING IT TO REPLY TO PEOPLE?
* updates consist of duplicate links and/or text UMMM… I SOMETIMES REPEAT A TWEET AT MOST 3 TIMES BECAUSE NZ’S TIMEZONE CAN CONFUSE SOME 🙂
* updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates I ACTUALLY do TWEET TWEETS WITHOUT LINKS – UNLIKE SOME/MANY – REGULARLY THEY ARE PITHY SAYINGS OR LITURGICAL TEXTS
* updates consist of updates poached from others’ timelines, passed off as one’s own NEVER!
Technical Abuse
* updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material NEVER!
* a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time I HAVE ONE (1) WHOLE ACCOUNT
* an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster DO THEY MEAN CHRISTIANS? HEY – NEW THOUGHT: THE CHURCH AS A SPAM CLUSTER…”
Strange indeed — is there anywhere at Twitter one can write to to complain?
UPDATE 28:08 NZ time: I’m back on twitter! No explanation (not even an auto email or autoDM! of explanation yet). I appear to have lost 6 followers & appear to be following 272 people less than when I was suspended. All else appears fine.
I HAD this problem! But no more Go To http://twitterunlocker.com
Unlock your account and get your username back in a couple minutes it’s easy. Often Twitter uses BOTS to suspend accounts even if you didnt do anything. Check it out.
Frank