Remember back when Twitter was bragging about how the US State Department had asked them to hold off on a service update that would have taken Twitter down for a very short period during the unrest that had swept Iran in 2009.
Or how about the way that Twitter was used during the whole Arab Spring uprising and was held up as the greatest thing for social change since the invention of the printing press.
Well times must be changing if the post by David Seaman at the Business Insider is any indication. It would seem that he had his account on Twitter nuked by the company for talking too much about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the concern over the government’s FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
According to Twitter his account was suspended because he ‘was annoying our users’; but by Seaman’s account the followers he did have appreciated the effort he was putting into keeping them informed with the newest news regarding those two things.
Plus there is always the standard fallback for any Twitter user who doesn’t like what is showing up in their streams – unsubscribe from the person.
If they didn’t appreciate it, ignorant bliss is only an ‘unfollow’ away. So why was I suspended only for covering two very serious news stories , and offering my own brand of commentary? I wasn’t harassing users. I wasn’t spamming. I wasn’t hawking affiliate or porn links or any of the trash that should get one swiftly suspended from Twitter. (I’ve received some spam direct messages already; funny that those aren’t suspended, but I was.)
I have contacted Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, and several tech journalists hoping to get some answers. I don’t want to start a big thing — I just want my account reactivated. This is America, not Iran, thanks in advance.
As Seaman found out he wasn’t alone in this as three other people have been deleted so far by Twitter because of this so-called ‘annoying users’.
So it would seem that like the government Twitter considers the use of its service by people looking for social change to be a good thing – except – when they live in the US.
