My Twitter account was suspended briefly yesterday, for a supposed breach of its rules on sending out too many ‘unsolicited’ messages.
I do send tweets to a number of people who have either shown interest in a topic or are well-followed and have previously expressed interest in my blog or in social issues generally. I’m aware that I’m saying something about my ego by assuming that what I have to say on a topic is worth reading, but it’s more that I think the things I write about are too important for me to be modest and worry about whether people think I’m arrogant in promoting my articles. And I do a lot of research, so perhaps I find information that wouldn’t be generally available otherwise.
However, yesterday I wasn’t particularly active in promoting what I’d written, compared to many other days previously – days on which my account wasn’t suspended. Someone must have complained to Twitter specifically.
I have a decent idea who, as there are certain people who find some of my views very inconvenient for their agenda, but the way Twitter’s complaint process works, I doubt I’ll ever be able to say for certain. The suspension only lasted an hour or two, but it comes with a warning that you might get a longer or even permanent suspension for further ‘infringements’.
So whether it’s a malicious attempt to shut me down, or I just happened to catch Twitter’s eye, I need to enlist some help – 20 or 30 people who are used to using Twitter and are prepared to help me on a regular basis, for maybe 10 minutes each time a post is published, so that I can get the word out on these important issues rather than being silenced by either malicious ‘abuse’ reports or the random attentions of Twitter.
If you’re up for it, please say so in a comment to this post and I should be able to pick up your email address from the WordPress stats to drop you a line with an outline of what I have in mind.
Thanks in advance!
I’m in xx
Brilliant, thanks Jane!
Hi Steve, I’m willing to help if I can.
Thank you!
There did seem to be multiple postings of the same tweet in a short period of time..which frankly is a bit of a pain..not major..but irritating. In my case I considered intelligent, but didn’t. I prefer it if people don’t repeat tweet over a short time…Marcus Chown is in danger of this, albeit his tweets are a bit different, but similar.
Yes, it’s always a risk of annoying people who follow you, especially if they don’t follow many people to dilute the impact of tweets on their timeline. Fortunately, most people who follow me do so because they’ve read something I’ve written and have a decent idea what’s coming. I never take offence if someone unfollows because of it.
Hi
I don’t use Twitter, but I do enjoy reading your posts received by email.
Good Luck
Gina
more than willing to help, this happens to a few female campaigners against domestic violence and racism I know with frightening regularity.
Thank you – really appreciate it! I can only imagine what those campaigners must face – I’m lucky by comparison to only face the occasional troll or mischief-maker.
We’d be happy to help Steve – info@guerillapolicy.org
Thanks mate! I’ll circulate details a bit later.
If I can help
Thank you!
Hi Steve, I use Twitter every day and as you know I’m a huge admirer of your work (I mean my admiration is huge, not me personally!)
Count me in.
lol – thank you very much!
Count me in!
Thank you!
Will help if I can!
Thank you!
Hi Tina, your email address showing on my WordPress dashboard bounced. Could you email me at ccgwatch@gmail.com?
Your contributions are most important. If I can help please ask. I guess someone has influence. You also know me as RobinMacfarlane
Thanks, Robin. I’ll circulate an outline to everybody later!
Count me in too…
Fantastic – thank you!
Too old to cope with twitter but really value having your pieces come into my inbox. Thank you very much for what you are doing
Thank you! If you’re on Facebook, you can still help by sharing the link there, too.
Are you on fb too Steve will share this on fb to in a bit DONE 🙂
Hi Lizzie, I’m on FB too. Really appreciate the help and will be sending out details of the help needed to all the volunteers in a few minutes.
my email is rainbowlizzie@live.co.uk mail me In Solidarity 🙂
Done – hopefully you got it ok!
Yep got it and action taken. 🙂
Of course – us ‘Old Geezers’ must stick together!
Hi Steve, I’d love to help if you can take into account I may not be very well some days. Your work is appreciated and it is obvious you have the makings a a very good journalist, don’t let them get you down.
I’m OK with this idea.
I once got suspended. It seemed to be an automatic thing with me required to promise I wouldn’t do it again.
The stupidity of the problem was that I’d hit send tweet but the software I was using reported that it had not been sent. I repeated the action a few more times and got the ban.
I wouldn’t be too paranoid it might just have been Twitter’s automatics.
P.S. I don’t think I managed to send the tweet in the end. 🙁
Happy to help, often retweet stuff of interest and link to FB as well
I am happy to help out with this plan.
I’m on Twitter, but not well up on it, Of course i will help in any way I can, keep up the good work
Happy to help
Love your blogs, you talk sense, I’m in
Hi Margaret, tried to email you the outline, but your email address bounced. Could you email me at ccgwatch@gmail.com?
Hi Steve
We are in, let me know what is required.
Count me in boyo: I’ve no flag but I can shout.
Of course, happy to oblige.
Happy to help, Steve.
Just let me know what I can do, Steve.
Count me in as well. I’m up for it!
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & POLITICAL JOURNAL and commented:
Always In Solidarity!!!!
Hiya Steve, just been on your twitter and it would not let me reply!! So am here and I’m in, just say the word what to do Skwalker In Solidarity!! 🙂
P.S…Keep up the good work without your reseach and all that you do to help others is outstanding, don’t let them grind ya’s down yea. We all here as one unity in Solidarity Huggs
Sorry…I do not use Twitter…at all
but…keep up the great blogs !!!!!!
Are you aware of this? Save Our Safety lobby, London, 11 June 2013 Unions UCATT and Unite are holding a joint lobby of parliament on 11 June 2013 to ‘expose the Conservative-led government’s attacks on health and safety laws.’ They say the lobby, which will concentrate on construction safety, ‘will be an opportunity to dispel many of the myths and lies that surround safety laws and members will have the opportunity to contact their MP about their concerns.’ The unions advise anyone wanting to attend the lobby to contact their MP in advance to make sure that they will be around on 11 June. There will be a post-lobby meeting between 1pm-3pm in the House of Commons
Chaz
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Hi Chaz, no I wasn’t aware of that. Do you have a link to a site for the event so I could promote it?
I’d be more than happy to oblige with your request. Keep up the good work!
Tim.
I’m a great fan of your work but leave a few days between linking to the same article- recently I have received about 5 or more links to the same article within a few minutes from your account. It’d look better if you let others link- which we will. You could watch @archangelolill, any more frequent post of same tweet than her is too much.
I understand your point, but I’m trying to change opinion – it needs a more concerted approach. Thanks for caring enough to comment, though!
But hopefully the measures I’m taking with the assistance of some very kind helpers will alleviate the problem and make me a bit less of a pain to my Twitter followers anyway! 🙂
I’ll help in a heartbeat! I always retweet you anyway, Steve, my only worry is, if I’m not on twitter as you tweet it, my timeline is choca and I could easily miss til later (then I do), however, I’d pop in specially to tweet it whatever I’m doing if I knew it was coming. Can you tweet me? Or does that defeat the purpose lol?
Just a thought, what about buffering it? https://bufferapp.com
A weird thing just happened. My Twitter account was also suspended after trying to reply to a person who had made an allegation about you,Steve, re your use of statistics. Since I rarely use Twitter it seems an odd coincidence.
Wow that’s strange, sparaszczukster, and very interesting for Steve to know I bet. What’s going on I wonder? Maybe statistics too spot on for some people!
That is very interesting! Who were you replying to? They may have tipped their hand by trying to be too clever.
I’d be happy to share on FB and Twitter (though, not a real big Twitter user, I still have a quiet little account that could do with dusting off!).
Thank you!
happy to help xx
If I can be of assistance, I’ll be glad too.
I like your stuff. Only have about 3000 twitter followers but let me know what you propose
I have been banned from posting on yahoo and kicked off facebook I take it as a compliment to the veracity of my posts- I must be hitting a nerve somewhere. Just keep doing what you’re doing, let them know we are nor fooled.
Thanks for the posts, I for one, find all your writings interesting. I doubt very much if you will have difficulty in enlisting helpers to the cause, but should this not be the case, I would try to help where ever I could.
Please keep up your brilliant work
If I can be of help in anyway just shout.
I really support what you are doing. I am a complete novice with twitter, but will do anything I can, if given “Noddy” instructions!
I will be glad to help,its essential that people like you continue to spread the truth about this evil government.
Bit of a technophobe but will help if I can.
I’ll be happy to help when I’m online. I’d have to be at my PC as my phone is very limited online, so I wouldn’t always be able to immediately respond, I will happily send out tweets for you when I can, but if you need guaranted quick responses I may not be ideal, but I’m there if you need me as an extra tweet source. I think you do a brilliant job and for me you are an invaluble source of news.
Just a thought, is there a possibility it could be a geniune mistake with twitter? A while back they wouldn’t let me follow back people saying I had reached my follower limit, even though it was like two people I was trying to follow. I had to send them loads of emails as kept telling me I was either being blocked by the users or had reached my limit, eventually I got an actual response from one of their engineers and they sorted it out. Recently though over the last few days I’ve been getting ‘you have reached your tweet limit’ when I haven’t sent anything near a thousand out, I’ve been signing out and back in and that seems to of worked but my account is definately twitchy again.
It could be, but I’ve had some other information that makes me suspect that it probably isn’t. Watch this space for more – and thanks for the kind offer! I’ll email details of the help method shortly.
I will help, mail me x
Not sure how much I can help, but I always tweet your posts and am happy to do more if poss.
Happy to help