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The ABC of a suspended Twitter account

In recent weeks, Twitter suspended some accounts of medium notoriety in Mexican cyberspace, which raised interest in knowing in more detail what are the criteria that this social network uses to suspend an account.

Hugo Rodríguez, director of public policies at Twitter Mexico, clarified that there are occasionally the following reasons for this to happen:

  1. Coordinate account detection to promote the same purpose or message at the same time.
  2. Fake accounts, in which one person pretends to be someone else to manage a particular account.
  3. Ignore or evade any previous sanction or challenge made the Twitter platform.
  4. For account security, until it is protected again, when it is detected that it was at risk of vulnerability or hacking.

In any of the cases, Rodríguez clarified that these behaviors are detected from different factors, such as anomalous activity detected by the intelligence systems and machine learning from the platform, a team of verifiers and from the reports that other users make on the accounts.

“The report is essential in terms of content review. Today 55% of the content that is removed is the product of a strategy of machine learning, but much is part of the context where reporting is essential. As for spam it is also essential but it is a myth that the number of reports is what forms the decision to suspend; a report is worth a report and it is a myth that if an army is massively organized and denounced, it is worth more, ”Rodríguez told Unocero.

One of the objectives of these actions by the platform is to reduce the impact of accounts that misinform or promote false information; A report from the organization Zignal Lab revealed that a week after Twitter suspended the account of former US President Donald Trump, messages from fake news about the elections in that country fell 73%.

Suspension notices

According to Rodríguez, when the platform suspends an account it is not overnight or for no apparent reason, as there is a process for this to happen.

Although on social networks, various users are inclined to say that the suspensions arrive unexpectedly or because their tweets said something about someone in particular, the firm clarifies that actions are only taken once warnings or so-called challenges to an account have been ignored suspicious.

According to Twitter figures, after the challenges 65% of the accounts corrected their behavior and were no longer considered suspicious.

In the case of hashtags, Rodríguez, warned that although the platform does have the power to “download” a hashtag, in case this is a wrong action, there are also mechanisms to appeal the action, as with accounts, to these are restored.

If your Twitter account is suspended and you think it is an error, you can contact the platform at this link.

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