Twitters Suspended – The Full Story | Minervity
How to Create an Illustrated Cartoon Character
Spotlight »
How to Create an Illustrated Cartoon Character
81,308 Views | 40 Comments

So, I decided to attempt to create a tutorial on how to create a unique illustrated cartoon character in Photoshop. It’s pretty straight forward and the skills you need for this is very limited as …

Read the full story »
Creative Corner

A series of in depth and heavily inspiring Graphic, Web and Logo Designer and Developer interviews.

Designer Apps

A resource vault of applications that would serve any Designer or Developer well to have in their arsenal.

Freelance Hub

A storage full of tips and tricks for every freelance Designer or Developer that wants to progress their business.

Geek Things

Every once in a while we’ll post a new geeky thing that might inspire you to go through the day with a laugh or a second thought.

Website Filter

A collection of websites that is sure to bring you creative inspiration and keep you on the edge of design.

Home » Story

Twitters Suspended – The Full Story

Submitted by Richard Darell15,916 Views | 55 Comments

Megaphone Girl

Here is the full an true story of what happened today, Tuesday 17th of February 2009. The day when everyone got together to make 4 people get back up.

Well, today was one of those weird days that really started off with a bang. At first, this looked to become just another day. I was writing a new blog post, chatting with a friend through AIM and checking some emais. It was about 5.30 in the morning when it happened. I was to re-tweet a blog post of mine that I just finished up (“Apple vs. The Rest – Brilliant!”) when I suddenly got a red square message on top of my web based Twitter form.

Your Twitter account has been suspended due to suspicious activity and will be investigated further. If you want to know why your account has been suspended please contact the Twitter Support Team for more information.

My jaw dropped to the floor wondering what I might have done wrong. First I was panicking as I had been working hard on posting good content on my blog (this blog) to gain followers and interest as a Twitter and a blog owner. As I started investigating what might have caused this unfair suspension I saw my followers starting to decrease. First one, then another 3. All in all I saw a decrease of exactly 10 people. First I thought people started unfollowing me for some reason I wasn’t yet aware of.

But it stopped at 10 and my TweetDeck application stopped updating tweets. I was shocked to say the least. I clicked the link to the support to shed some light on what my mistake could have been. But as I read through the heavy list of reason why they would suspend your account I couldn’t figure out one single reason why my account would have been suspended. I had done nothing of what would make your account get suspended.

I quickly searched for the Support Submission form and found it within like 10 seconds. I wrote:

I feel my account has been unfairly suspended!! i was about to twitter my latest blog posts and I got suspended. I have a small following group that can verify my NON suspicious behaviour and I would really like to have my account unsuspended immediately.

My account is @Minervity and I can in whatever way you want prove that I am not a spammer or doing anything that i shouldn’t be doing. I am RT’ing peoples shareings and talking to people.

Please unsuspend immediately.

It was sent exactly Feb. 17th 08.14. I wanted to know what was up and also tell my wonderful followers that I had been suspended without reason so I created an emergancy account and started talking to my closest friends on Twitter. I had been following these guys since the very start.

As I started following some people it didn’t take long before I got the imfamous message:

This account has been suspended. Nothing to see here. Now move along.

I got them for @cameronolivier, @imjustcreative and @cristianvasile. I was so confused. What was going on! These guys are like the coolest and the nicest guys ever. Why were they suspended as well?

I started a convo with @mayhemstudios to see if he had any information on what might have happened. After all, the guy had been around for almost a year and should know what the heck was up. Unfortunately he was as surprised as I was about the whole thing.

@joshhemsley and @mayhemstudios quickly started a rescue campaign to make sure something was done. These guys rock! They launched a full scale campaign to spread the word about this unfair suspension and even created a “Free The Twitters” campaign page. It can be found here: “HELP Bring Back These Twitter Users!”

Here’s a screen shot of the page:

Rescue The Twitters

With followers heavily dedicated to make sure Twitter undid their wrong doings, people started RT:ing the message over and over again rapidly making us the most talked about Twitter for the day. The rescue RT read:

Help @imjustcreative @cameronolivier @Minervity — Accounts all suspended! — Send complaints to suspended@twitter.com

It became this viral message showing up everywhere. I want to believe that the Twitter crew got a bit overtaken by the load of people trying to help us get our accounts back. At least I was. With joy in my heart I couldn’t do much more than wait to see what was going to happen.

The RT:ing just got more fired up when we realized that it was something really wrong going on. At one point a few of us received a cryptic tweet that read:

@mayhemstudios The #hashtagmafia rubbed @imjustcreative, @cameronolivier & @minervity out. #respect

We didn’t make much of it but the thoughts that came to me made me smile. Someone was trying to ride the stream.

We all pretty much just kept up the spirit thinking something must be done soon. At one point I read somewhere that it would take the Twitter Support team between 5-7 work days to investigate why my account was unfairly suspended. 5-7 WORK DAYS!!

At 12.34 I received an email from Twitter support. An email that spurred some conversation amongst the people on twitter. It read:

Your account has been restored. It would appear that you have a number of spammers following you and using your material for their own accounts and, as a result, you were caught up in a spam cloud (through no fault of your own) and suspended. Please notify us if you encounter any other issues.

Cheers,
Del

Wow, I thought. This is messed up. But before I go in to any details of the email I want to give huge props to this “Del” for acting so fast to restore our accounts. Twitter, guys like these deserve a salary raise. He’s clearly doing his job. Way faster than your 5-7 work day average resolve time. Del, thank you, whoever you are.

The email I got from the support is quite interesting.

First of all, it proves they have auto-suspension on Twitter. No matter who you are or what you have or haven’t done. If you end up in the spam cloud you obviously get suspended without explanation or reason.

Second, “Spam Cloud”. What is that anyways. We tried to discuss it and our conclusion was pretty much something of a filter checking if something is over RT:ed sending it in to the “Spam Cloud” setting the flag of anyone twittering it. This seem very dodgy and stupid as Twitters whole purpose is to spread news, fast.

Third, why did WE end up in the “cloud”? None of us has the intention of spamming anything. As long as I have followed these guys I have enjoyed ever second of it and I think their followers feel the same way. Shouldn’t there be at least a warning or an “investigate” group where you end up before they decide whether you are a spammer or not?

Even though they had restored our accounts we still couldn’t follow each other. At first it looked like they had regulated our relations. Somewhat saying we couln’t RT each others tweets.This seemed so wrong and as we started up another campaign but it soon died down again as our accounts started behaving like they were supposed to again.

It seems like our account where actually re-activated because we all started getting these automated DM’s. And it wasn’t one or two. It was 10-20 at a time. It’s 13.47 right now and I am still receiving them. Hoping they will stop as time goes by. @mayhemstudios has written several tweets about automated “Thank You For Following” DM’s and now I understand him. Dude, I sign whatever petition you throw at me just to get these “spammers” to stop using them bots.

In the end came another interesting twist. From the same cryptic group of stream hijackers cam this message:

If you’s guys need anything, I mean anything… don’t hesitate to ask. The olive branch has been extended to you @Minervity. #hashtagmafia

Once again this person/group tried to ride the tweet stream. It’s quite ironic that these people try so hard. Isn’t it!

Before I end this recap of today’s events I would also like to thank @sh3n3rd and @modbird for launching their own campaign to save us from the jaws of infinity. You guys helped us alot and I (and I know the other guys is as well) am humbled by the generousity and the dedication you spent on us to get us back up again. Hugs to you both!

Isn’t it weird how a day can go from silent to rockstar just to fade out into the same ole ordinary twittering.

Thank you all for your support and thank you for taking the time to read this! Who knows, maybe you are next! Be careful!

Best Regards,

Twinster / @Minervity


Popularity: 9% [?]

55 Comments »

  • Farrhad A said:

    Same had happened to me…really weird. Glad their response was quick, and we are back now :-)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:05 am
  • mayhemstudios said:

    I was glad to help out! So many caring followers out there. Glad you and all the guys are back :)

    - Cal

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:09 am
  • Lolagrrl said:

    Ah, this reminds me of the time (gasp!)over a year ago when a bunch of us tweeps launched a similar campaign for @FoulBastard.
    His account was suspended for different reasons. Back then, Twitter would suspend your account if they saw a bunch of people blocked you… obviously not everyone loved Fouly as much as we did, but hey, it’s a free country, right? :) . Anyway, we launched the @FoulBastardArmy (I see the account is still around) in an effort to bring him back and changed our avatars in solidarity.

    Twitter was much smaller then but the emergence of the @FoulBastardArmy combined with a massive campaign on GetSatisfaction (great service BTW!) actually got Twitter to change their criteria when it comes to suspending accounts.

    Of course, I see that people still get suspended unfairly though.
    Well, congratulations, welcome back to Twitter, and thanks for the little trip down memory lane! =)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:09 am
  • Misty said:

    Thank you for posting the story, it is quiet alarming that this kind of situation happened to you guys.

    I kinda felt that something was wrong when i logged in today, i started to read the posts of people i follow and interact with a lot, then suddenly everything was quiet. I checked @imjustcreative and i got the message This account has been suspended. Nothing to see here. Now move along. then you had the same message.. couldn’t believe it. wanted to do something about it but was called in for a meeting.. then when i got back there were already some calls for HELP.. The spammers and automated DMs have been happening since Sunday, but did not think it would be this serious. It is no joke. You are one of the people whose posts i follow on here. Just glad that things are back to normal.. Hope it does not happen again.. to any of us on twitter

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:15 am
  • Colonel Tribune said:

    Always happy to see Twits helping each other out. I’m glad this was resolved, Richard.

    -TC

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:39 am
  • ryan evans said:

    the war between spammers and twitter is ugly and will undoubtedly get worse. sorry to see you got caught in the crossfire….welcome back.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:42 am
  • DesignMeme said:

    Glad that they got it sorted out so quickly. I wonder if anyone else was caught up in it and slept through the whole thing. :)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:43 am
  • Colleen said:

    My friend Leah’s account was suspended before she could post more than 5 posts. And the 5 she posted were the “WTF is this site” posts that everyone makes when they start. NOT spammy.

    She has emailed them and heard nothing back.

    Sometimes I don’t think they know what they’re doing over there at Twitter. But this made me really angry.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:51 am
  • Doyle Albee said:

    I’ve been very judicious of late blocking those that are obvious spammers. Although this is the first I’ve heard of this activity by Twitter, it’s just one more good reason to try to keep the community free of the jerks.

    Great post. Thanks for taking the time to articulate this issue!

    Doyle
    @doylealbee

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 6:55 am
  • Rizzo Tees said:

    What an absolutely crazy story! Welcome back to Twitter

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:00 am
  • amyrlinsedai said:

    That’s just crazy

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:11 am
  • Cameron said:

    To everyone that helped with this, thank you so very much!! all in all it was sorted out so quickly.

    I am quite awed by the response of my twitter friends

    thank you guys!!

    cam

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:15 am
  • "Simon Net Guru" said:

    Great article, I have had a couple of my accounts suspended I thought it was for following to many people to quickly, I put in a support but they never replied. I heard that you should not follow to many people to quickly so now I am careful not to follow to many people too quickly. I now have a new account that I have had no problems with…

    http://www.Twitter.com/netmillionaire

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:22 am
  • Twitter_Tips said:

    You can opt out of receiving a lot of those auto-DMs:

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:33 am
  • Jason Williams said:

    Wow, what a crazy day. I thought my account was locked down too, but it came back after a few hours. Glad to hear it all worked out.

    And what’s up with the @hashtagmafia part of the story? Eerie.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:39 am
  • Dhananjay Nene said:

    Did not understand a few things :

    a. What is riding the twitter stream ?
    b. As per your discussion (even if it was speculative), is there a risk of suspension if
    i. You have a lot of spam followers,
    ii. You follow them back,
    iii. They retweet you.

    Thanks
    Dhananjay (@d7y)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 7:39 am
  • Robert Banh said:

    Dude, if this happens again you have my email address. Contact me and we’ll get something going… new site, feeds, tweets. You got an army over here ;)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 8:10 am
  • Hendricius said:

    Ouch, I noticed that a couple of my followers suddenly got suspended. Spam is getting an issue, even on Twitter.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 8:41 am
  • dawntrenee said:

    I had this happen to me many months ago right when I was in the process of starting up my VA business. It was very frustrating and I of course had to wait the 7-10 days for my account to be reinstated. Although they never really told me why, just that it should have been suspended. Glad things worked out better for you.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 8:47 am
  • myows said:

    Thanks for sharing this very interesting story. It’s interesting that even on twitter honest people get condemned for crimes their didn’t commit.

    I’m glad it ended up alright.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 8:53 am
  • kelly said:

    Does following a spammer accidentally anything to do with twitter suspending a Twitter account?

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 9:02 am
  • Stuart Manning said:

    That was a bit *nuts* re: Suspension. Glad to all four of my favourite Tweeters back and full reinstated.

    And *props* to ‘Del’ getting you back up and running so soon.

    Stuart

    @stuartmanning

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 9:14 am
  • Lunaraven13 said:

    that is pretty nuts. you guys provide a lot useful, helpful info. Happy to see the calvery made it in time!

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 10:02 am
  • modbird said:

    Yay!! so glad you guys are back :)
    It is very scary that the whole thing even happened.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 10:47 am
  • Graham Smith said:

    Very insightful post as I for one have not received one item of correspondence from Twitter relating to this issue, not event he messages you received.

    Seems as well that during this process, people we followed were dropped from our follow list, giving the impression we had unfollowed them. No idea how many this relates to, but do wonder if things are properly back to normal.

    It was an awesome display of community collaboration this morning, so many people helping spread the message.

    Much thanks to all those that helped,

    I will be posting my own account, but more from how reliant I am on Tiwtter for client work and how this could of been a huge disaster.

    Thanks mate for posting about it

    Graham

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 10:49 am
  • Firgs said:

    Glad to see you guys are back! I would really love to know more about this “Twitter Mafia” that is taking out the big people. Something tells me there is more to this story.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 11:23 am
  • Mossyy said:

    Thanks for the heads up and info on the spam cloud. The situation is interesting to say the least especially if youhave an automated system working feverously to track and block spammers.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 11:29 am
  • Mika Kiviranta said:

    In the end this all happened very quickly. This proved how powerful your community can be. There are guys who are willing to help if things go wrong. That is really something.

    I’m glad you all are back.

    @mikakiviranta

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 12:13 pm
  • Marvin said:

    Pleased the learn that the Twitter Gods have smiled favorably on you but odd how this all came to pass. Nice to know that a popular tweet being RT’d could create the appearance of being spam to the system. I’ll file that away for future reference just in the event that anything I Tweet should become so popular.

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 12:34 pm
  • Who is #hashtagmafia | TwitDictionary said:

    [...] Tuesday, February 17th, it was reported here that several accounts may or may not have been rubbed out by the [...]

    - 17 February 2009 at 1:57 pm
  • Joel said:

    It’s good to know this information,
    because i am really new to Twitter.

    Last week i got two followers suspended
    due to spam issues.

    By the way, this is my first time
    on your blog, and let me tell you
    that is very useful.

    Joel

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 2:30 pm
  • Cameron Senior said:

    It just goes to show what a great community has sprung up so quickly within the twitter universe.

    I can say – like a lot of people no doubt – the 4 of you along with @mayhemstudios form the core of our twitter follows in the web design / dev area. So much great content and retweets come from you guys!

    Glad you guys are back up!

    Cheers,
    Cameron (@damnpenguins)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 3:16 pm
  • Mandi Leman said:

    Thank you for posting this! I was wondering why all four of you decided to stop following me at the same time :P – SO GLAD you’re back and huge props to those who helped! Awesome community :)

    [Reply]

    - 17 February 2009 at 3:35 pm
  • Digg news, Twitter tools | acmaurer said:

    [...] new algo at Digg shows the site now limits the number of stories users can Digg a day to about 90. Twitters suspended – The full story – Suspended and you don’t know why? You may be experiencing a similar problem as these folks. [...]

    - 17 February 2009 at 5:22 pm
  • Alex said:

    Was a real shocker yesterday, glad to see everyone is back and it was all resolved :)

    [Reply]

    - 18 February 2009 at 2:54 am
  • Minervity » Twitters Suspended - Part 2 - #Hashtagmafia Revealed said:

    [...] Read all about it in yesterday’s viral story that unleashed a huge conversation whether Twitter’s spam security model was making the lives of Twitters worse rather then good. You can find yesterday’s article here: “Twitters Suspended – The Full Story” [...]

    - 18 February 2009 at 5:31 am
  • AndySowards.com :: Web Development Nerdy Daily Links For 2/18/2009 | AndySowards.com :: Professional Web Design, Development, Programming, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster? said:

    [...] Minervity » Twitters Suspended – The Full Story Crazy read about some friends of mine that were suspended from twitter wrongfully, and the story of how they were rescued! (tags: ping.fm article twitter) [...]

    - 18 February 2009 at 6:41 am
  • david said:

    ive wondered about that, should we be having to block all the spam accounts, just in case, that puts the extra work on you when it is something that twitter should be controlling…

    if you have a lot of posts should u be punished if people are taking that and passing it off as long as you are acknowledged?

    [Reply]

    - 18 February 2009 at 11:16 am
  • Hernan Valencia said:

    We love you guys, I’m glad you are all back. What a great community!

    [Reply]

    - 18 February 2009 at 11:17 am
  • Cosmonaut said:

    Man, scary. Spam is becoming a huge problem for Twitter, and I’m afraid it could render the channel useless in the long run.

    [Reply]

    - 18 February 2009 at 11:20 am
  • Rodney Rumford said:

    Minervity,
    I feel your pain!

    I just had my account suspended for no reason 4 hours ago. No bots, no TOS violations, no aggressive friend following, etc…

    But twitter was quick to respond and said i got caught up in a spam cloud thru no fault of mine and quickly reinstated my account.

    Now I can breathe again. Social networks have become like air. http://twitter.com/rumford is back and alive on twitter. ;)

    here is what a suspended account looks like. http://twitpic.com/1kd30

    Cheers!

    [Reply]

    - 19 February 2009 at 2:29 am
  • Jannifer S. said:

    I’m confused… why did this happen to you, yet the TweeterGetter thing gets RT’d by hundreds of people and Twitter does nothing about that?

    [Reply]

    - 19 February 2009 at 10:52 pm
  • The week in links 20/02/09 - Craig Baldwin's Blog said:

    [...]      Not all websites follow the scrolling norm, here’s the best of those. 10/  Twitter Suspended – The Full Story (minervity.com)      Read the full story of what happened when some big Twitter users were [...]

    - 20 February 2009 at 9:21 am
  • Some Twitter Etiquette « More Stupid Than the Others said:

    [...] THIS MUCH that my username gets suspended while caught in a spam cloud. Or [...]

    - 23 February 2009 at 3:35 am
  • Cate ceva despre twitter » deea // supermagnet said:

    [...] ma panichez in halul asta ca am ramas fara cont de twitter pentru cateva ore, zile, ce-o [...]

    - 24 February 2009 at 6:00 am
  • Pliggs said:

    Wow, that’s scary. Hard to believe you can get suspended because a bad cat follows you, that’s not your fault.

    Glad to see it worked out though.

    [Reply]

    - 27 February 2009 at 7:56 am
  • Vince Delmonte said:

    Not that I’m impressed a lot, but this is a lot more than I expected for when I stumpled upon a link on Digg telling that the info here is awesome. Thanks.

    [Reply]

    - 14 April 2009 at 11:06 pm
  • Olympic2010news said:

    I have been suspended. No idea why, but I have been out of twitter for 5 days!!! Ahhhh

    HEEEELLLLPPPPP!

    [Reply]

    - 14 June 2009 at 8:14 pm
  • Pinay Random Blogger said:

    I’ve experience that also which really makes me disappointed, they don’t even give us a note what’s the real reason of suspending our accounts.

    Anyways, I’m I’m glad that my account is back now, after 1 week and 2 days of waiting…

    I hope you and others will get back asap also.

    [Reply]

    - 16 June 2009 at 9:59 am
  • CarlMaxx said:

    Same happened to our but it wasn’t because of spam cloud.
    It was because of an App we used to manage followers and view profiles (called Refollow). The app was hanging constantly and then did a reprocess which unfollowed and then refollowed a lot of people.
    We got suspended for follower churn – completely accidental – but be very careful with App to manage your follower list.

    [Reply]

    - 13 August 2009 at 4:05 pm
  • TwitterUnlocker said:

    In less than 5 mins you can have your account back at http://twitterunlocker.com

    [Reply]

    - 3 October 2009 at 12:53 pm
  • BuckleyMargery33 said:

    Lots of specialists state that home loans aid a lot of people to live the way they want, just because they can feel free to buy needed goods. Moreover, various banks give bank loan for different persons.

    [Reply]

    - 8 March 2010 at 7:55 pm
  • Shawn said:

    Ah now I get it. Same thing happened to me last Monday, then today my account restored and the spam cloud message. I had thought it was a waste of time going through followers and blocking spammers, figured it made little difference, most of them would leave on their own. Now I know better. I’m cleaning out my spammy followers and will instantly block new ones that look spammy.

    [Reply]

    - 26 April 2010 at 4:50 pm
  • omega watches said:

    I enjoy reading the report, too. It′s easy to understand that a journey like this is the biggest event in ones life.
    xiaoxiao123 08 31

    [Reply]

    - 31 August 2010 at 12:09 am
  • Juicy Couture said:

    I hope you have a nice day! Very good article, well written and very thought out. I am looking forward to reading more of your posts in the future.
    http://www.juicycouture4u.com/

    [Reply]

    - 2 September 2010 at 1:03 am

Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

Anti-Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree

Spam protection by WP Captcha-Free