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They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN or Tor. However, you can simply appeal the block and tell them you haven't tweeted and not broke

by _jomo 7y ago

They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN or Tor. However, you can simply appeal the block and tell them you haven't tweeted and not broken any rules. They will send you an automated mail, offering to validate your phone number, or reply to the mail if your problem is not solved. Just reply to the mail. Unfortunately, processing the request takes anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 weeks; usually a couple days at least. I assume this is on purpose to make it cumbersome for spammers. They always reply with the same boilerplate, but the account will be unlocked: Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience. Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.

numbsafari 7y ago
When I worked in banking we would do this with suspect transactions. The feature was called “Strategic Delay”. After awhile, all of our project plans (this was back in the days of Gantt charts) would include two weeks of effort on “Strategic Delay”, even if that feature wasn’t involved.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Yeah, I have abandoned a bank due to bad rules on its strategic delays on transactions. Every time I had a problem I could solve it with a quick call, even outside of working hours, but it was a bother. It's not an inherently bad thing to do, but it's easy to overdo, and on a company that depends on network effects it can be very dangerous.
- munk-a 7y ago
  This is slightly different though, twitter is silly and unnecessary - access to your money is not. During some of the recent shows highlighting issues with payday lending these sorts of strategic delays were mentioned in the light that they can cause irregularly paid workers to have problems actually getting money out of their paycheck - forcing them into more borrowing until they are able to clear their checks. Again, twitter is just silliness, but the banking example is a lot more serious of a case where the pros and cons need to be very carefully weighed.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    > twitter is just sillines Would you say the same about your phone number? If not, why? If I run my business on Twitter (or YouTube, or Facebook) is it that different from a bank?
    - ams6110 7y ago
      If you are running a business on Twitter, I don't see a big issue with having a phone number connected to that Twitter account. It doesn't strike me as unreasonable.
      - TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
        Depends on the business, and whether there's a limit to the number of accounts a number can be linked to. A business can quite legitimately have multiple accounts for different departments, brands, or any other purpose. If you can only have one account per phone number, that can quickly become a problem.
        nyuszika7h 7y ago
        Their help page claims a phone number can be linked to 10 accounts at once, but in practice I've found that limit to be 4 or even less. Also, they often prevent a number from being added to more accounts for a few days or weeks even if you remove it from all accounts.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      No? I'm not clear on what the real point of this question is - twitter is a terrible platform to use for actual communication. Their sorting by "relevance" can cause recent messages to get lost in the shuffle and randomly mess with your visibility. It may be you're considering twitter as a business in which to coordinate product sales, but I'll assume it's for customer relations management, many companies that have a twitter account for CS stuff also offer email, messanger (of some sort) and phone if you have an issue you need to resolve due to the fact that platform just isn't well suited for business - the network effect of it is surprisingly low (a _lot_ of people aren't on or don't regularly use twitter), it is semi-public which may violate your business concerns and... you're handing the keys to your reputation to the third party that has acted poorly in the past. If you check out youtubers talking about youtubers (I have no specific example on hand) they tend to complain endlessly about how the trending algorithms can drive thousands of potential viewers toward or away from their channel for no particular reason - there the network effect is strong enough that they don't have an option though, if your business is streaming a show then YouTube offers a much richer starting viewer base. I guess my assumption is, if your business doesn't force you to use a particular social media platform exclusively then... use some other communication method per preference? I'm really just confused by the question though - these things are not the same and twitter is simply not as important as the place your money lives (and I think pretty much everyone would agree? Maybe I'm getting too old)
- cm2187 7y ago
  The same is an efficient email anti-spam technique (greylisting). Except that you get all your emails delayed by 20min-5h, which will not make any user happy.
goranb 7y ago
I tried to open a new account on Twitter app for Android, using only my email. It was going ok until it asked me to provide my phone after confirming my email. The reason: suspicious activity / spam behavior. The account is in limbo now, and I can't access it any more. Time to spin up a Mastodon instance.
- RandomTisk 7y ago
  The same thing happened to me two years ago, though I had signed up with a PC with Gmail and my account was locked pending phone verification within an hour.
- plinkplonk 7y ago
  fwiw, if you challenge this, twitter will restore your account.
tootahe45 7y ago
Keep in mind your account isn't really unblocked, you have a very high chance of being shadow banned if you post on a VPN or TOR.
Vinnl 7y ago
I think this process was the first actual change in my behaviour I noticed in response to GDPR: I actually did not mind providing my phone number that much, and trusted that they actually deleted it when I requested them to (using an option in the interface) after my account was re-approved.
- nyuszika7h 7y ago
  They definitely do not delete it entirely because sometimes a phone number is prevented from being added to more accounts for a few days or weeks, saying "This phone number is already registered with another account" even if it's been already deleted from all accounts, though they may be just storing a hash of the number that's not linked to any user account.
nyuszika7h 7y ago
You don't even need to use a VPN or Tor, this happens often for pretty much any account registered from a residential IP as well. This is the form you have to use: https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended
justaj 7y ago
This didn't work in my case. I signed up using a Tutanota e-mail. Every time I got a verification code and then entered it into twitter I got an "Oops, something went wrong." message. After spending many hours in vain trying to find Twitter's e-mail support, I gave up and initiated a "Trouble logging into my account" help procedure. However, that ultimately failed since surprise! Twitter couldn't find any history under that account name.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Simply, easily, trivial. With just a little effort. Try again often, try again later. No problem, to appeal, the process, Mr.Kafka, all you have to do is, be seen by two witnesses, to uphold your interest in.. Of course, if that is to complicated, and the nuances of the wording, are a endless stream of passive agressive insults to your intelect. Noone can help you, because there is noone home. The company you are trying to reach, consists of a algorithmic amobea, and would like to connect you with other concerned customers, so that you can all support each other in these difficult times, created by this difficult company. Just give them a fake telephone number: https://receive-smss.com/ https://receive-smss.com/
- RankingMember 7y ago
  Those temp SMS numbers used to work, but now the places that require a phone number seem to be sharing notes and block them (they'll accept it, but never send a text). This is similar to how places that require an email address have gotten pretty good at blocking many of the temporary email providers (they'll accept them and just never send you an email).
octosphere 7y ago
> They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN I made my own VPN with Algo[0] and host it on Digital Ocean. The IP is a Digital Ocean IP and therefore really hard to blacklist as a VPN. There is no way to tell if I am using a VPN and I regularly setup new accounts on Twitter (mostly shitpost accounts used for venting at products/companies that have wronged me), or novelty accounts that have a particular theme to them, etc [0] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago
hn top comments: justification on tap
neop1x 7y ago
People... please... move to Mastodon https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/. There is no point in using commercial centralized service for things like sharing short message. I hate Twitter because: - slow javascript - ads - won't show full thread without loging in - now requiring phone - censorship

by _jomo 7y ago

numbsafari 7y ago

When I worked in banking we would do this with suspect transactions. The feature was called “Strategic Delay”. After awhile, all of our project plans (this was back in the days of Gantt charts) would include two weeks of effort on “Strategic Delay”, even if that feature wasn’t involved.

marcosdumay 7y ago
Yeah, I have abandoned a bank due to bad rules on its strategic delays on transactions. Every time I had a problem I could solve it with a quick call, even outside of working hours, but it was a bother. It's not an inherently bad thing to do, but it's easy to overdo, and on a company that depends on network effects it can be very dangerous.
munk-a 7y ago
This is slightly different though, twitter is silly and unnecessary - access to your money is not. During some of the recent shows highlighting issues with payday lending these sorts of strategic delays were mentioned in the light that they can cause irregularly paid workers to have problems actually getting money out of their paycheck - forcing them into more borrowing until they are able to clear their checks. Again, twitter is just silliness, but the banking example is a lot more serious of a case where the pros and cons need to be very carefully weighed.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > twitter is just sillines Would you say the same about your phone number? If not, why? If I run my business on Twitter (or YouTube, or Facebook) is it that different from a bank?
  - ams6110 7y ago
    If you are running a business on Twitter, I don't see a big issue with having a phone number connected to that Twitter account. It doesn't strike me as unreasonable.
    - TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
      Depends on the business, and whether there's a limit to the number of accounts a number can be linked to. A business can quite legitimately have multiple accounts for different departments, brands, or any other purpose. If you can only have one account per phone number, that can quickly become a problem.
      - nyuszika7h 7y ago
        Their help page claims a phone number can be linked to 10 accounts at once, but in practice I've found that limit to be 4 or even less. Also, they often prevent a number from being added to more accounts for a few days or weeks even if you remove it from all accounts.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    No? I'm not clear on what the real point of this question is - twitter is a terrible platform to use for actual communication. Their sorting by "relevance" can cause recent messages to get lost in the shuffle and randomly mess with your visibility. It may be you're considering twitter as a business in which to coordinate product sales, but I'll assume it's for customer relations management, many companies that have a twitter account for CS stuff also offer email, messanger (of some sort) and phone if you have an issue you need to resolve due to the fact that platform just isn't well suited for business - the network effect of it is surprisingly low (a _lot_ of people aren't on or don't regularly use twitter), it is semi-public which may violate your business concerns and... you're handing the keys to your reputation to the third party that has acted poorly in the past. If you check out youtubers talking about youtubers (I have no specific example on hand) they tend to complain endlessly about how the trending algorithms can drive thousands of potential viewers toward or away from their channel for no particular reason - there the network effect is strong enough that they don't have an option though, if your business is streaming a show then YouTube offers a much richer starting viewer base. I guess my assumption is, if your business doesn't force you to use a particular social media platform exclusively then... use some other communication method per preference? I'm really just confused by the question though - these things are not the same and twitter is simply not as important as the place your money lives (and I think pretty much everyone would agree? Maybe I'm getting too old)
cm2187 7y ago
The same is an efficient email anti-spam technique (greylisting). Except that you get all your emails delayed by 20min-5h, which will not make any user happy.

goranb 7y ago

I tried to open a new account on Twitter app for Android, using only my email. It was going ok until it asked me to provide my phone after confirming my email. The reason: suspicious activity / spam behavior. The account is in limbo now, and I can't access it any more. Time to spin up a Mastodon instance.

RandomTisk 7y ago
The same thing happened to me two years ago, though I had signed up with a PC with Gmail and my account was locked pending phone verification within an hour.
plinkplonk 7y ago
fwiw, if you challenge this, twitter will restore your account.

tootahe45 7y ago

Keep in mind your account isn't really unblocked, you have a very high chance of being shadow banned if you post on a VPN or TOR.

Vinnl 7y ago

I think this process was the first actual change in my behaviour I noticed in response to GDPR: I actually did not mind providing my phone number that much, and trusted that they actually deleted it when I requested them to (using an option in the interface) after my account was re-approved.

nyuszika7h 7y ago
They definitely do not delete it entirely because sometimes a phone number is prevented from being added to more accounts for a few days or weeks, saying "This phone number is already registered with another account" even if it's been already deleted from all accounts, though they may be just storing a hash of the number that's not linked to any user account.

nyuszika7h 7y ago

You don't even need to use a VPN or Tor, this happens often for pretty much any account registered from a residential IP as well. This is the form you have to use: https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended

justaj 7y ago

This didn't work in my case. I signed up using a Tutanota e-mail. Every time I got a verification code and then entered it into twitter I got an "Oops, something went wrong." message. After spending many hours in vain trying to find Twitter's e-mail support, I gave up and initiated a "Trouble logging into my account" help procedure. However, that ultimately failed since surprise! Twitter couldn't find any history under that account name.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Simply, easily, trivial. With just a little effort. Try again often, try again later. No problem, to appeal, the process, Mr.Kafka, all you have to do is, be seen by two witnesses, to uphold your interest in.. Of course, if that is to complicated, and the nuances of the wording, are a endless stream of passive agressive insults to your intelect. Noone can help you, because there is noone home. The company you are trying to reach, consists of a algorithmic amobea, and would like to connect you with other concerned customers, so that you can all support each other in these difficult times, created by this difficult company. Just give them a fake telephone number: https://receive-smss.com/ https://receive-smss.com/

RankingMember 7y ago
Those temp SMS numbers used to work, but now the places that require a phone number seem to be sharing notes and block them (they'll accept it, but never send a text). This is similar to how places that require an email address have gotten pretty good at blocking many of the temporary email providers (they'll accept them and just never send you an email).

octosphere 7y ago

> They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN I made my own VPN with Algo[0] and host it on Digital Ocean. The IP is a Digital Ocean IP and therefore really hard to blacklist as a VPN. There is no way to tell if I am using a VPN and I regularly setup new accounts on Twitter (mostly shitpost accounts used for venting at products/companies that have wronged me), or novelty accounts that have a particular theme to them, etc [0] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago

hn top comments: justification on tap

neop1x 7y ago

People... please... move to Mastodon https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/. There is no point in using commercial centralized service for things like sharing short message. I hate Twitter because: - slow javascript - ads - won't show full thread without loging in - now requiring phone - censorship