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A little update on Twitter's decision to permanently suspend my verified @alekboyd account. On 27 August, Twitter placed a temporary lock on my account. The intention was to get me to delete tweets that "violated" Twitter's rules. Since I didn't consider that I was in violation of Twitter rules, and I did not want to delete the tweet in question without first explaining why, I didn't delete the tweet. No communication was ever established with Twitter. No chance of arguing why I did not want to delete the tweet was ever given. When I posted in this site that Twitter, and their censorship, could go fuck themselves, temporary lock moved to permanent suspension. I am not so deluded as to think that Twitter monitors this website, but the thugs that keep trying to silence me certainly do. So the conclusion is that somebody at Twitter, as in a real person rather than a bot, took the decision to de-automatise the temporary lock process, which would have immediately ended had I deleted "offending" tweet, and permanently suspended my account. Every subsequent request, for my account's data or explanations as to why wasn't I given the chance to argue my case, was met with template replies likely sent programmatically rather than by actual Twitter staff reading communications. All templates were the same, until yesterday, when a different reply was sent, stating that further messages from me won't even be monitored. The take away message here is: due process is something that Jack and his progressive snowflakes at Twitter don't give a shit about. It's their rules and that's that. They can impose censorship, ignore perfectly valid demands for explanations, laugh at copyright infringement take down notices, disregard pervasive defamation, impersonation, fake news, and abuse of their platform by Russian and Venezuelan bots / troll farms. Their rules and Terms of Service are interpreted totally subjectively. Below, and for the record, the communication it has repeatedly refused to reply.
Twitter permanently suspended my account due to following reasons:
- Violating our rules against posting private information;
- publishing people’s private information without consent;
- threatening to hack Twitter or other platforms in order to obtain someone's private information; and/or; posting intimate photos or videos taken or distributed without the subject's consent;
- Your account has been suspended and will not be restored because it was found to be violating Twitter's Terms of Service (https://twitter.com/tos), specifically the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules) against using hateful or sensitive content in your profile.The private information that Twitter argues posted is, I presume, the cell number of a ("diplomatic") representative of a Venezuelan politician to the UK. The number was sent to me, by said representative, in the course of an email exchange.
There was no mention whatsoever, prior, during, or after, by the said individual that email exchange with me was “off the record”, that is, it is not a reasonable expectation to be had -while communicating with an investigative journalist- that communications and details contained therein are secret, or private, unless explicitly requested.
In fact, the very same individual whose cell details were posted by me, replied on Twitter to a question I posed (https://twitter.com/vanessaneumann/status/1146787950140755976) regarding corruption (which is my field of work). Here’s there’s another reply, to one of my tweets: https://twitter.com/vanessaneumann/status/1156113381331480576
Therefore, there was ample time for this person to explicitly request that any email exchange, and details of said exchange, would have to be off the record, which never happened. This person subsequently threatened me, through Twitter DM.
Twitter, on the other hand, placed a temporary lock on my account, with the possibility of deleting the tweet that allegedly violated Terms of Service / rules. That is, had I decided to delete that tweet my account would not have been permanently suspended.
Twitter then claimed that I was involved in “threatening to hack Twitter or other platforms in order to obtain someone's private information”, an accusation that has no basis whatsoever.
Twitter also claimed that my profile contained “hateful or sensitive content”, which is preposterous, considering that my background picture was a selfie that I took in 2014 with the Dalai Lama. The picture made its way around the world. Just Google it. My profile picture was a profile picture, and the text in my profile was: “Equal opportunity exposer of corruption | Leaks: alekboyd at ProtonMail | DM | Block applied with total abandon | infodio.com | Consultant @kyctool”.
How can that be considered “hateful or sensitive” is beyond me. Perhaps Twitter can provide me with an explanation in this respect.
Twitter took less than 48 hours to move from temporary lock to permanent suspension. In this time:
- Twitter never once tried to get my version of events;
- warned me that failure to delete tweet breaching ToS would result in permanent suspension without further recourse.Based on the above, please explain reasons for permanent suspension of my account.
