Hi! I recently had my account suspended and locked on Twitter, I believe, for inappropriate content. I was asked to delete the tweet. I was tweeting to another adult, and used a particular word. My account was suspended and locked, while the other person’s was not. We were both using the word in the same context. Why did my account get tagged, and his did not?
Twitter has a variety of factors they use to make those kinds of decisions. I don’t know why your account was suspended and the other person’s account wasn’t.
Is there a way to report efficiently spammer accounts?
I mean accounts that are twitting 24/7 and are twittering 2000 twitts
per day, always the same twitt over and over again.
Why twitter dont delete these accounts permanently?
I just have a question and it may sound like a dumb question but I just don’t know the answer so here goes….if your account is suspended, can you still view other peoples post or pages from that acct or can you not even get on Twitter at all unless you create another account? Thanks
I think I got caught up in the too many accounts it must be spam thing. This is a shared family computer everyone uses so I know there are multiple accounts from multiple people on this computer. I am finding more and more every day all the issues sharing a computer causes, it’s ridiculous. I can’t even get points in a videogame I play because my sister has the game too and it thinks I’m an alt account.
That’s a new one for me Jak. I can see why Twitter would do something about someone logging into and out of several accounts on the same device (i.e. a hacker or someone with a buy followers service logs into thousands of accounts on one computer), but that’s definitely not what you are doing. Perhaps you can use your mobile device to show there are logins for the same account on multiple devices. However, understand that I am guessing at this point since Twitter’s rulebook is private (and, for the most part, rightfully so as some would abuse it)
Hi Marc, great article (and comments below). My a/c has been locked and I have done the contact them thing a couple of days ago but haven’t heard anything. I very, very rarely heart posts (simply because I don’t want to offend someone by not hearting their tweet if I hearted another followers tweets 🙂 ). I have never said anything offensive on twitter (or indeed the net) as that is not why I ever entered the net in the first place. I have a good following on twitter and indeed some high profile people have followed me (I never follow famous people unless I get a follow first). I have kept my a/c friendly and have made lots of friends there (some of us even get together a couple of times a year for a tweet up). Anyway, I noticed that not only am I currently locked which is obviously bad enough and I have no idea why, but also that they still have my follower number but have removed all the people I follow! I know I have done nothing wrong and as far as I know, not hacked so have no idea why I am locked out. I was in fact the highest rated for my county (before famous people from here got on to twitter 🙁 😀 ). When I go to the page to try and restore/appeal I can’t get past the ‘prove you’re not a robot’ bit. I click the areas of the pics shown to prove it and then that is that and I get no further – I just hope it means they still have received my request to unlock my a/c. I have another a/c not linked to that one and had never used it but am now and have tweeted to twitter from that to ask them to help but as I said, nothing so far. Hope you might have some ideas? Thanks.
I would recommend following up with Twitter as often as you can. Sometimes it can fall through the cracks and they get so many requests. One thing I’m almost certain about is that when your account gets unlocked, it will revert back to following all of the people you were following prior to the account getting locked.
I got hacked recently on Twitter and they suspended my account due to it posting inappropriate content. Before that I an app that was tweeting out stuff that i do not remember giving permissions to. I had not had a chance to login to fix things that were tweeting out on my behalf before this hack and then massive spam and the hacked happened at the same time. Tried to appeal but I keep getting denied when it appears this is all the work of the hacker to get me suspended. I don’t know what else to do and would love to get my account back.
Can you send me your Twitter username and the link you’ve been using to contact Twitter. I can contact them on your behalf. I’ve done stuff like this before.
same thing happend to me and I have a decent sized fan base a hacker tweeted out a threat and i need help getting it back my twitter is @itslukezz my twiiter i use now is @thedudelukez plz help
Is it spam when you mention other users too often? My account was suspended when I participated in quite a few Twitter chats and I had to mention others to interact with them. Twitter never provided a clear explanation
I didn’t even know about that rule. I don’t want to give a clear answer because I don’t know all of the details, but that doesn’t seem right, especially with a chat where that type of interaction is expected. I continuously thank the same people for sharing my content and my Twitter account is okay.
I have been on Twitter for 7 years and everything was fine for the most part. Only had 1 or 2 minor problems years back but they were always resolved with no problem. Another time I was blocked for a month from retweeting, I forget why I was but I let it go and waited that month out and went back to the usual tweeting and everything was fine.
Then recently, I had seen a story about ANTIFA’s run in at Fenway Park in Boston. Hanging a banner over the Green Monster in left field, We all know the story. Anyways, I had made a few remarks about ANTIFA’s immaturity and doing what they did. Never issued threats, nothing like that. Being on there as long as I have been, I knew better than to do that.
Apparently, it turns out that more than a few had complained about how I replied to what I saw and subsequently, I was suspended and I filed an appeal. Twitter, totally disregarding my nearly flawless record in 7 years ignored all of the positive history on the site and appease those who complained about me and suspended me. I filed an appeal and they got back to me and said that I ignored the general rules of Twitter and I had issued threats or something along those lines but I never did and had plenty of proof that I didn’t either. Again, they tuned it out, insisted my page is NOT being restored. I tried to overcome that and start anew with new Twitter names after I signed up using my Hotmail and Yahoo addresses. They had NO connection to the suspended account at all, not in the least, but before I could ever post, THOSE accounts were also suspended.
I enjoyed my time and all the friendships I had earned on Twitter during my 7 years as a upstanding member of the community. No matter how many times I appeal, they seem intent on keeping that user name silent. What I would like to know is if I can do anything possible to be able to resume using Twitter again as I had before? I would set up a brand new name on a completely different e-mail site and would NOT any of the previous credentials I used in the past. Is there anything possible that I can do to possibly regain my access and username back on Twitter like before or no? I was hoping someone could help me with this ASAP! Thanks much, Eddie
As a lot of people may know, I am a Red Sox fan, so it was painful to see those few people do what they did. I hope people are better than letting a small group of people create the perception for how all Red Sox fans and people of Boston must be like (I’m not from Boston, but still. That idea applies well beyond a sports team, its fans, and the city).
Regarding your Twitter account, I’ll see what I can do. I’d need to see that no threats were issued, and then I’d contact Twitter. I’ve done stuff like this for people in the past when they’ve had problems. For someone who was fine for 7 years, it’s shocking they would immediately suspend you.
Dang… Didn’t know the heart button or favoriting could get you in trouble. Twitter doesn’t even explain this on their unsuspend page I was sitting here trying to think of what I could have done when I found your article. ( I think I retweeted too many times) Thank you!
I believe Twitter needs to be more clear on what results in an account suspension. They have some guidelines, but sometimes Twitter can get very technical about small stuff that is not clearly stated. Bridget, I am sorry to hear about what happened to your account. You can complain but finding their email address is so hard (though I understand why).
Fantastic article! Several months ago, I actually reached the 2,000-follower mark on Twitter and Twitter said that I reached that limit in a big way. I was able to delete some followers so that it wouldn’t happen again. Now, I’m staying somewhat cautious whenever I try to follow more people on Twitter.
It’s good to be careful about who you follow. You should only strive to follow people within your niche who empower you, you can empower, or people who possess both of those traits.
Thanks for a great list. I have to admit I went a little crazy with the follows when I first started. I thinks that’s not unusual though. Thanks again for the info
My pleasure Samantha. It’s not unusual for people to go crazy with following people at the beginning. It’s constant following and unfollowing (this is called churning) that typically leads to a suspension.
Marc only just seen this post today (good regeneration of content strategy BTW). Great tips and advice.
I have one main a/c & several off-shoot /xx I use for particular industry sectors. I hope I’m not falling foul of rule no. 6. I’d hate to loss my main a/c because of that.
Based on what you are doing, your account will be safe. Twitter mainly enforces that rule on people who create numerous accounts (i.e. in the hundreds or in the thousands) so they can offer services where people can buy fake followers (a.k.a. flushing money down the toilet). You are providing value and engaging with your audience so your accounts will be safe.
It would be great if everybody knew the “rules” when they open their account. The rules seem fair, although I might have been guilty of using favorites too much. Thanks for the information Marc.
My pleasure John. The reason I think favoriting is bad is because it’s just a time efficient way to have a conversation. Conversations like “Thank you for sharing this article” are more meaningful than simply favoriting the tweet. Favoriting the tweet makes the person imply you are grateful, and for some people, favorites are easy to miss.
Some great safety tips here – as an Affiliate Marketer I always play by the rules and you make mention of engaging with your audience which is key.
Colin
Yes, engagement will always be key. Engagement allows us to understand our customers, and no matter how much we advance, that knowledge will always be important for businesses.
Just followed link from Twitter posted a couple of hours ago. My impression with favorites on Twitter was that the daily limits were comparable to how many tweets you could put out. I’ve always used favoriting liberally: as thank you for posting engaging content, bookmarking, acknowledgement and hopefully sometimes as a fillip. All best wishes.
Thank you Katharine. Although favoriting is the preferred method, it is more effective to interact with your audience. Twitter also likes it when you interact (spammy accounts don’t interact at all). Besides, the word social is in social media.
My pleasure. Favoriting tweets was definitely something that shocked me when I first saw it. This usually applies to the people who are favoriting dozens of tweets every day. My recommendation is to only favorite 3-5 tweets every day because if you force yourself to not favorite tweets, you are also going to force yourself to have more conversations with your followers (which is a good thing).
Very interesting. I am surprised that they dont mention suspending the accounts of people who insult, threaten and curse. Ive had to block many nutcases because of this. Also many tweets never give you a comment or a reply no matter what you say…just wondering if these REAL James Woods accounts for example are manned by robots.
Very handy advice there, and concisely structured, thanks for posting it. Personally, I’ve found that consistently following up to 2,000 people (rather than 1,000) to try and attract my own followers has so far attracted no attention from Twitter. (Fingers crossed!)
Also, a genuine careers organisation I know in the UK had their account suspended because they went beyond a limit of 100 tweets / hour for a short period. The reason was entirely genuine, since it was the start of National Careers Week, of which they were the driving organisation, and they were drumming up support and hype at the start of the week. They did appeal and were successful, otherwise I think they’d have been suicidal!
Hi! I recently had my account suspended and locked on Twitter, I believe, for inappropriate content. I was asked to delete the tweet. I was tweeting to another adult, and used a particular word. My account was suspended and locked, while the other person’s was not. We were both using the word in the same context. Why did my account get tagged, and his did not?
Twitter has a variety of factors they use to make those kinds of decisions. I don’t know why your account was suspended and the other person’s account wasn’t.
Is there a way to report efficiently spammer accounts?
I mean accounts that are twitting 24/7 and are twittering 2000 twitts
per day, always the same twitt over and over again.
Why twitter dont delete these accounts permanently?
I’m sure you can reach out to Twitter Support and bring up this issue. You can also hit the down arrow on the top right of any tweet to report it.
I just have a question and it may sound like a dumb question but I just don’t know the answer so here goes….if your account is suspended, can you still view other peoples post or pages from that acct or can you not even get on Twitter at all unless you create another account? Thanks
That is a good question that I don’t know the answer to. You can always view other people’s content on Twitter without logging in.
I think I got caught up in the too many accounts it must be spam thing. This is a shared family computer everyone uses so I know there are multiple accounts from multiple people on this computer. I am finding more and more every day all the issues sharing a computer causes, it’s ridiculous. I can’t even get points in a videogame I play because my sister has the game too and it thinks I’m an alt account.
That’s a new one for me Jak. I can see why Twitter would do something about someone logging into and out of several accounts on the same device (i.e. a hacker or someone with a buy followers service logs into thousands of accounts on one computer), but that’s definitely not what you are doing. Perhaps you can use your mobile device to show there are logins for the same account on multiple devices. However, understand that I am guessing at this point since Twitter’s rulebook is private (and, for the most part, rightfully so as some would abuse it)
Hi Marc, great article (and comments below). My a/c has been locked and I have done the contact them thing a couple of days ago but haven’t heard anything. I very, very rarely heart posts (simply because I don’t want to offend someone by not hearting their tweet if I hearted another followers tweets 🙂 ). I have never said anything offensive on twitter (or indeed the net) as that is not why I ever entered the net in the first place. I have a good following on twitter and indeed some high profile people have followed me (I never follow famous people unless I get a follow first). I have kept my a/c friendly and have made lots of friends there (some of us even get together a couple of times a year for a tweet up). Anyway, I noticed that not only am I currently locked which is obviously bad enough and I have no idea why, but also that they still have my follower number but have removed all the people I follow! I know I have done nothing wrong and as far as I know, not hacked so have no idea why I am locked out. I was in fact the highest rated for my county (before famous people from here got on to twitter 🙁 😀 ). When I go to the page to try and restore/appeal I can’t get past the ‘prove you’re not a robot’ bit. I click the areas of the pics shown to prove it and then that is that and I get no further – I just hope it means they still have received my request to unlock my a/c. I have another a/c not linked to that one and had never used it but am now and have tweeted to twitter from that to ask them to help but as I said, nothing so far. Hope you might have some ideas? Thanks.
I would recommend following up with Twitter as often as you can. Sometimes it can fall through the cracks and they get so many requests. One thing I’m almost certain about is that when your account gets unlocked, it will revert back to following all of the people you were following prior to the account getting locked.
I got hacked recently on Twitter and they suspended my account due to it posting inappropriate content. Before that I an app that was tweeting out stuff that i do not remember giving permissions to. I had not had a chance to login to fix things that were tweeting out on my behalf before this hack and then massive spam and the hacked happened at the same time. Tried to appeal but I keep getting denied when it appears this is all the work of the hacker to get me suspended. I don’t know what else to do and would love to get my account back.
Can you send me your Twitter username and the link you’ve been using to contact Twitter. I can contact them on your behalf. I’ve done stuff like this before.
same thing happend to me and I have a decent sized fan base a hacker tweeted out a threat and i need help getting it back my twitter is @itslukezz my twiiter i use now is @thedudelukez plz help
i also have had this problem. so frustrating
Is it spam when you mention other users too often? My account was suspended when I participated in quite a few Twitter chats and I had to mention others to interact with them. Twitter never provided a clear explanation
I didn’t even know about that rule. I don’t want to give a clear answer because I don’t know all of the details, but that doesn’t seem right, especially with a chat where that type of interaction is expected. I continuously thank the same people for sharing my content and my Twitter account is okay.
I have been on Twitter for 7 years and everything was fine for the most part. Only had 1 or 2 minor problems years back but they were always resolved with no problem. Another time I was blocked for a month from retweeting, I forget why I was but I let it go and waited that month out and went back to the usual tweeting and everything was fine.
Then recently, I had seen a story about ANTIFA’s run in at Fenway Park in Boston. Hanging a banner over the Green Monster in left field, We all know the story. Anyways, I had made a few remarks about ANTIFA’s immaturity and doing what they did. Never issued threats, nothing like that. Being on there as long as I have been, I knew better than to do that.
Apparently, it turns out that more than a few had complained about how I replied to what I saw and subsequently, I was suspended and I filed an appeal. Twitter, totally disregarding my nearly flawless record in 7 years ignored all of the positive history on the site and appease those who complained about me and suspended me. I filed an appeal and they got back to me and said that I ignored the general rules of Twitter and I had issued threats or something along those lines but I never did and had plenty of proof that I didn’t either. Again, they tuned it out, insisted my page is NOT being restored. I tried to overcome that and start anew with new Twitter names after I signed up using my Hotmail and Yahoo addresses. They had NO connection to the suspended account at all, not in the least, but before I could ever post, THOSE accounts were also suspended.
I enjoyed my time and all the friendships I had earned on Twitter during my 7 years as a upstanding member of the community. No matter how many times I appeal, they seem intent on keeping that user name silent. What I would like to know is if I can do anything possible to be able to resume using Twitter again as I had before? I would set up a brand new name on a completely different e-mail site and would NOT any of the previous credentials I used in the past. Is there anything possible that I can do to possibly regain my access and username back on Twitter like before or no? I was hoping someone could help me with this ASAP! Thanks much, Eddie
As a lot of people may know, I am a Red Sox fan, so it was painful to see those few people do what they did. I hope people are better than letting a small group of people create the perception for how all Red Sox fans and people of Boston must be like (I’m not from Boston, but still. That idea applies well beyond a sports team, its fans, and the city).
Regarding your Twitter account, I’ll see what I can do. I’d need to see that no threats were issued, and then I’d contact Twitter. I’ve done stuff like this for people in the past when they’ve had problems. For someone who was fine for 7 years, it’s shocking they would immediately suspend you.
Dang… Didn’t know the heart button or favoriting could get you in trouble. Twitter doesn’t even explain this on their unsuspend page I was sitting here trying to think of what I could have done when I found your article. ( I think I retweeted too many times) Thank you!
I believe Twitter needs to be more clear on what results in an account suspension. They have some guidelines, but sometimes Twitter can get very technical about small stuff that is not clearly stated. Bridget, I am sorry to hear about what happened to your account. You can complain but finding their email address is so hard (though I understand why).
Fantastic article! Several months ago, I actually reached the 2,000-follower mark on Twitter and Twitter said that I reached that limit in a big way. I was able to delete some followers so that it wouldn’t happen again. Now, I’m staying somewhat cautious whenever I try to follow more people on Twitter.
It’s good to be careful about who you follow. You should only strive to follow people within your niche who empower you, you can empower, or people who possess both of those traits.
great article, very educational!
Thanks Rich 🙂
Thanks for a great list. I have to admit I went a little crazy with the follows when I first started. I thinks that’s not unusual though. Thanks again for the info
My pleasure Samantha. It’s not unusual for people to go crazy with following people at the beginning. It’s constant following and unfollowing (this is called churning) that typically leads to a suspension.
Marc only just seen this post today (good regeneration of content strategy BTW). Great tips and advice.
I have one main a/c & several off-shoot /xx I use for particular industry sectors. I hope I’m not falling foul of rule no. 6. I’d hate to loss my main a/c because of that.
Based on what you are doing, your account will be safe. Twitter mainly enforces that rule on people who create numerous accounts (i.e. in the hundreds or in the thousands) so they can offer services where people can buy fake followers (a.k.a. flushing money down the toilet). You are providing value and engaging with your audience so your accounts will be safe.
It would be great if everybody knew the “rules” when they open their account. The rules seem fair, although I might have been guilty of using favorites too much. Thanks for the information Marc.
My pleasure John. The reason I think favoriting is bad is because it’s just a time efficient way to have a conversation. Conversations like “Thank you for sharing this article” are more meaningful than simply favoriting the tweet. Favoriting the tweet makes the person imply you are grateful, and for some people, favorites are easy to miss.
Excellent post thank you, AS
My pleasure Annmarie.
Some great safety tips here – as an Affiliate Marketer I always play by the rules and you make mention of engaging with your audience which is key.
Colin
Yes, engagement will always be key. Engagement allows us to understand our customers, and no matter how much we advance, that knowledge will always be important for businesses.
Just followed link from Twitter posted a couple of hours ago. My impression with favorites on Twitter was that the daily limits were comparable to how many tweets you could put out. I’ve always used favoriting liberally: as thank you for posting engaging content, bookmarking, acknowledgement and hopefully sometimes as a fillip. All best wishes.
Thank you Katharine. Although favoriting is the preferred method, it is more effective to interact with your audience. Twitter also likes it when you interact (spammy accounts don’t interact at all). Besides, the word social is in social media.
Great post, Marc! There were a few things I learned from it, such as favoriting too many tweets. Thanks for your insights!
My pleasure. Favoriting tweets was definitely something that shocked me when I first saw it. This usually applies to the people who are favoriting dozens of tweets every day. My recommendation is to only favorite 3-5 tweets every day because if you force yourself to not favorite tweets, you are also going to force yourself to have more conversations with your followers (which is a good thing).
Very interesting. I am surprised that they dont mention suspending the accounts of people who insult, threaten and curse. Ive had to block many nutcases because of this. Also many tweets never give you a comment or a reply no matter what you say…just wondering if these REAL James Woods accounts for example are manned by robots.
They are either done by bots or people who wish they were James Woods. Accounts like these exist for all celebrities and famous people.
Very handy advice there, and concisely structured, thanks for posting it. Personally, I’ve found that consistently following up to 2,000 people (rather than 1,000) to try and attract my own followers has so far attracted no attention from Twitter. (Fingers crossed!)
Also, a genuine careers organisation I know in the UK had their account suspended because they went beyond a limit of 100 tweets / hour for a short period. The reason was entirely genuine, since it was the start of National Careers Week, of which they were the driving organisation, and they were drumming up support and hype at the start of the week. They did appeal and were successful, otherwise I think they’d have been suicidal!
HTH, thanks again, keep up the great work!