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Twitter suspends account tracking Maxwell trial

453 points| Jimmc414 | 4 years ago |patriotone.substack.com | reply

340 comments

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[+] balbaugh|4 years ago|reply
There is a Substack associated with the suspended twitter account [0].

They have made a recent post about the suspension of said account and all of the users other twitter accounts [1]. It states that twitter told the user "the account was “artificially” amplifying information".

[0] https://patriotone.substack.com

[1] https://patriotone.substack.com/p/twitter-suspension

[+] sebastien_b|4 years ago|reply
> It states that twitter told the user "the account was “artificially” amplifying information"

By that logic, Twitter should also be blocking @jack's account due to all the Bitcoin-pushing going on there too.

In fact, I think I'll go report it now...

[+] thrower123|4 years ago|reply
There's a whole wave of real accounts that have been swept up in a couple of ban-waves in the past week, falsely accused of being bots.

Seems like they are doing network-based targeting, because none of them had tweeted anything particularly offensive.

[+] oh_sigh|4 years ago|reply
How can you trust someone who says "There was not outside amplification"? How would the controller of the twitter account differentiate between simple virality and outside amplification? Of course, it's lame that Amy can buy a bunch of bots to get Bob's account canceled.
[+] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
So they were banned for using sock puppets to popularize their tweets?
[+] rurban|4 years ago|reply
The spooks hate the light. Now that the spooks control not only traditional media, but also social media, it's very dark.
[+] bambax|4 years ago|reply
It's ironic that they're using Substack when they say:

> Big tech has gotten too powerful, and they can silence us anytime they want.

Substack is well on its way to becoming part of "big tech" and is yet another platform you don't control.

Setting up your own blog will not protect you from any and all threats but it makes arbitrary "suspensions" very difficult.

[+] mikeyouse|4 years ago|reply
There are plenty of reputable journalists closely following the trial including Julie K Brown, the Miami based reporter whose story broke the whole thing open a few years ago leading to these arrests:

https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist

Adam Klasfeld is another one I enjoy:

https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports

[+] bko|4 years ago|reply
Great. Why did twitter delete this one?
[+] slickdork|4 years ago|reply
Wow, twitter is really unusable unless you have an account. Can't read threads or look at pictures now. Anyone have a workaround?
[+] daneel_w|4 years ago|reply
So? It's irrelevant that there are others reporting about it.
[+] lp0_on_fire|4 years ago|reply
By handwaving this away I take it you're ok with Twitter deciding who is "reputable" and a "journalist"?

There's no evidence this account violated the Twitter TOS.

[+] nahqz|4 years ago|reply
Ah well, if we have "reputable journalists" on the case then we don't need some lowlife reporting on it.
[+] dundarious|4 years ago|reply
I’m sure there’s plenty of hyperbole in this post, and it's really just more hearsay, but within their lane, I think TrueAnon is reputable enough. https://twitter.com/trueanonpod/status/1468617453718675461

> It was some doofus not at the trials trying to shill his paid sub stack and then tweeting absolute bullshit. As you can imagine, a lot of the 500,000 followers were bots, which is probably why it got suspended. Also we are covering this for Barstool Sports.

(Quote tweeting a Barstool Sports account, so that part’s a joke).

> It had 200k followers the day after it was launched it doesn’t take a damn genius to figure it out!!!

[+] arpstick|4 years ago|reply
very convenient that a lot of bot accounts suddenly follows an account for people trying to amplify the accessibility of information of a trial that is suspiciously low profile considering the people involved.
[+] bko|4 years ago|reply
They also suspended Nancy Tracker [0], a twitter account tracking Nancy Pelosi's stock trades.

Something else I noticed that I think has changed is the follower counts on suspended accounts, which is only available on the app. It may have always been hidden on the web.

I get it, they're a private platform. But if they're acting on behalf of powerful state actors, how can we say that's not suppression on speech? The white house has admitted that they're in direct contact with social media platforms even going so far as tagging posts for "misinformation" [1]. In theory the state can't restrict the speech on social media. But in practice they don't even need to.

[0] https://twitter.com/NancyTracker

[1] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-would-government-ce...

[+] ericras|4 years ago|reply
I just got banned from Twitter a couple days ago for the same reason: "platform manipulation and spam". I only occasionally tweet about college football and don't do anything illicit at all. All I can figure is I was banned simply because of the accounts I follow, which included @TrackerTrial among other "controversial" conservative-type political accounts.
[+] zaph0d_|4 years ago|reply
I am not sure if they are aware of the Fediverse [1,2]. The Fediverse essentially rebuilds all the social-networking services but as federated services. This means each service can be hosted by multiple instances and instances can communicate with one another, but all still have their internal rules. I think they even used the "-verse" term before the whole Metaverse-hype.

They could move the tracker to a suitable Mastodon instance [3] or even host their own Mastodon instance in order to get a suitable exposure out there (Maybe even use one of the Blogging instances). This would also be a first test how robust the Fediverse is with respect to external pressure.

[1] https://fediverse.party/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [3] https://instances.social/

[+] Jimmc414|4 years ago|reply
It is sad that actions like this don't even surprise people anymore. Perhaps this is one of those Twitter actions that falls under the umbrella of "improving community discussions" instead of the first amendment.
[+] TechBro8615|4 years ago|reply
Twitter banned the US president and went out of their way to clarify they are not banning the Taliban.
[+] impendingchange|4 years ago|reply
I call being censored like that "got twittered". It'll be bad for Twitter when that descriptor becomes commonly used.
[+] pixelgeek|4 years ago|reply
Why would you be surprised that an account that was accused of being part of a content system spreading misinformation would be suspended?

A person can say what they want but no-one is forced to listen to it or help promote it.

As well, if this account was part of a system of bots and fake accounts that were spreading a particular message isn't that something that you want to see removed from a social media platform?

Isn't authentic information and material important?

[+] cdcarter|4 years ago|reply
I don't support reasonless bans and no communication from Twitter. That said, this account was not particularly useful for tracking the trial. In particular, they were tweeting a lot of what they hoped would happen or wanted to happen. Folks were constantly replying "is that what happened today, or what should happen?" E.g. something like "Now is the time for Federal Agents to show exactly who was on all the CDs". This was not an event that happened in the courtroom. Clearly the prosecution has no desire to reveal all that information when there's still a possibility of going after those parties next. The trial tracker account was no good.
[+] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
Is there a good case for why someone who doesn't use twitter would create an account and use it now? Trying to figure out what organic growth for them looks like.
[+] moralestapia|4 years ago|reply
A few months ago I created an account for a website I have, followed a few accounts, tweeted once and was then banned for literally no reason. All of this happened in less than 24h.

After that, I try to avoid Twitter when possible.

It's also a cesspool of entitled pseudo-intellectuals (both left and right leaning), so I don't miss it much, honestly.

[+] pixelgeek|4 years ago|reply
I tried to open an account a while back as there were a lot of coders on Twitter that I wanted to follow. I almost immediately shut the account down due to 1) the utterly broken search and 2) the sheer number of 'suggested' accounts or trends to follow.

Even if you aren't concerned about issues that this account brings up it is a miserable user experience.

[+] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
Asian and African markets probably. For western nations it becomes a containment platform like Tumblr has been until it destroyed itself.
[+] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
despite all this, twitter is still the source where you can find "dissident" voices who speak for themselves. For example with the whole discussion wrt to vaccines, all other sources do some inane level of "censoring" which has no rhyme or reason. HN generally avoids the subject due to politics, reddit allows its $0/month moderators to do whatever the fuck they want, FB ewww i wont even go there, what's left?

For me twitter is the only source where i can subscribe to people who aren't passionate, aren't constantly preaching, and aren't afraid to present their side of the story (they exist, you just have to find them by aggressive elimination)

[+] pixelgeek|4 years ago|reply
I think this really just speaks to the problem of people relying on platforms like this for news.

The system can easily be gamed and there is something about the immediacy of it that tends to inflame people. Which I suspect is why there are so many people trying to game them in the first place.

As a whole I don't think we are really mentally and emotionally prepared for this kind of communication.

[+] jake_morrison|4 years ago|reply
Twitter has a huge problem with bots.

On one hand, there are a lot of bots which are more or less malicious, e.g. trying to cause political strife or promote scams. On the other hand, Twitter sells advertisers on the idea that they have however many millions of users. So if Twitter was to actually get rid of the bots, then they would cause advertising revenue to drop, which might actually kill the company. So they are stuck with algorithmic techniques which walk a fine line of accuracy.

The solution is probably to mass verify real users (though "real name" verification is problematic). Right now, they use verification as a way to play favorites. Real users with hundreds of thousands of followers can't get verified.

[+] convery|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Twitter added the rule banning pictures/reports on non-public persons on the first day of the trial.. which also coincidentally was the day Twitters and other companies CEO/CFO's all suddenly resigned; thus making them non-public persons..
[+] kordlessagain|4 years ago|reply
Twitter is a cesspool, with lush islands of information crisscrossed with rivers of sewage.
[+] tempfs|4 years ago|reply
If you rely on social media for your news you're gonna have a bad time.
[+] TrispusAttucks|4 years ago|reply
How do we save our freedom? Why is the truth such an apparent threat?

Every day there is more and more of this that I am losing hope.

[+] Jimmc414|4 years ago|reply
The truth has always been a threat to those who hide behind lies. It helps to realize that the world isn't necessarily getting worse as much as our information about it is getting better.