Twitter seems to be on a roll lately. It would seem, either by bug, or some new policy just implemented, Twitter has just suspended hundreds to thousands of Twitter accounts with little to no reason. You can see all the action, semi-real-time here.
I just received a tip from a good friend, a very strong Twitter user and definitely not a spammer, who was one of those people suspended without cause. She stated she submitted a ticket to Twitter support and the ticket was immediately closed with no reason. Looking over Twitter search, she’s not the only one, and many very valid accounts are complaining of having their Twitter accounts suspended out of the blue. Reasons for suspension are often following people and unfollowing people frequently, following people too fast, blatent spammy behavior, among other things, but based on the users I know were suspended none of these activities were happening.
There is no word from Twitter on this matter – I’ll update the post when I hear more. You can watch the suspensions and the horror occur in real-time (thanks to FriendFeed, ironically) below:
UPDATE: Twitter has responded via their Status blog: “Earlier today, we accidentally suspended a number of accounts. We regret the human error that led to these mistaken suspensions and we are working to restore the affected accounts—we expect this to be completed in the next several hours.”
Other major accounts suspended: @marismith, @denisewakeman, @loubortone, @tweetlater, @deniseoberry, @radionational – if your account was affected please leave a comment!
