Troublesome tweetings

May 12, 2019|Out of bounds|Blog, LOTRO, World3

Me suspicious, Twitter?

Some of you may have noticed that I recently created a new account on Twitter. I have used my old one without problems since autumn 2010, when I first signed up with the service. However, I recently ran into several issues that made me pretty much abandon my old one and start afresh.

So, this blog post will do two things:

1. Give a short description of the issues I ran into.
2. Give a rundown of the absolutely ludicrous back-and-forth I have had with Twitter support to try resolve the issues. Short version: They did not help at all.

Twitter troubles

I use Twitter on both PC (home + work), my iPad and on my cellphone. Additionally, I use an app that reads/pulls tweets from my timeline and posts them on my homepage. This has worked well for years. I mostly tweet related to Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), various other games, movies, books, food or anything Tolkien-related. You’ll not find any politics or controversy in my tweets, unless you feel that “biscuits” absolutely have to be called “cookies”.

Around April 1st, I received an email from Twitter saying that they suspected my account had been compromised and that I had to change my password. I duly did so, and everything seemed normal afterwards. There had been no rogue tweets, direct messages or account changes that I could see.

There is a reasonably active Twitter community around LOTRO, not least with the account @lotrofamily, which promotes and retweets LOTRO-related stuff. In the days following my password change, I noticed that my tweets using the hashtags #lotro and #lotrofamily were not retweeted. I messaged a bit with @lotrofamily and found that he could not see my tweets under the #lotrofamily hashtag (they still showed for me). We decided that I should mention @lotrofamily directly instead of using the hashtag, so he would get notifications whenever I tweeted relevant stuff.

Guess what? He didn’t see the notifications either.

So I started digging around. Everything seemed normal when I was logged into my account, but it soon became apparent that:

• My account and my tweets were hidden from Twitter search, for others than myself
• No-one got notifications when I mentioned or replied to them
• My tweets were hidded in Twitter conversations

Basically, I was muted from Twitter. My followers could still see my tweets when they popped up in their timeline or when they went to my account page to dig around there, but any sort of meaningful interaction with others was impossible.

So I contacted Twitter support to try solve the issue.

My account did not show in search

Twitter support to the non-rescue

Here is a compressed timeline of the interactions I have had with Twitter support to try resolve the issues.

April 1:

Twitter emails me that they suspect my account has been compromised and asks me to change password. I do so.

April 9:

After finding out that my account and tweets are muted, I send a ticket to Twitter support: “My account is not showing in search”, where I describe the issues of tweets missing from search/conversations + that others don’t get notifications from my mentions.

A few hours later, Twitter replies via email:

• “We believe that your account …. may be compromised by a user or a service not associated with Twitter. To secure your account and continue safely using Twitter… change your password.”

April 10-11:

I change my password again and remove any apps related to my account. This does not solve the issue, so I email Twitter again. 24 hours later, they reply:

• “We just sent you a password reset for the Twitter account associated with your email address. Click the link in that email to create a new password for your account.”

Agh… So I change my password AGAIN, which again does not solve the problem. Cue a new email to Twitter – help help. 24 hours later, they reply:

• “Thanks for getting in touch. Please note that in some cases, Tweets may not appear in search results. ” + various links to their FAQs.

Which does not really solve my issue, since I had been up and down over all those FAQs in the week before. Which I let them know in a new mail. After this? Silence…

I send a new email April 13. Silence. A new email April 15…

April 16:

Twitter finally replies again:

• “Please click the URL below, or copy and paste it into your browser, to create a new account password”

This is when I refuse to change my password again… I email back to say that my problems remain.

Another round of silence from Twitter.

April 23-24:

I send yet another mail to Twitter, to remind them that my problems remain. Twitter replies the day after:

• “Thanks for your email. In order to help you troubleshoot, we need to know how you’re accessing Twitter.” Plus some questions how I use twitter, which apps I use, etc.

It finally looks like some troubleshooting is happening – yay! So I duly send in my answers to the questions.

April 25:

Twitter replies:

• “Thanks for writing in. Please try clearing your browser cache and cookies, which should resolve the issue.”

Um, say what? If I clear the cache and cookies on my PC, people in the rest of the world will suddenly see me in search and get notifications from my mentions? What kind of nonsense is this?

Which is pretty much the message I try to convey to Twitter in my follow-up email, where I yet again stress that I’d like my issues solved.

After this?

Silence…

Silence…

I send them another reminder on April 29.

Silence…

Silence…

May 6

I send them yet another reminder about my ticket: Twitter replies within minutes:

• “You tried to update a case that has been closed. Please submit a new case at http://support.twitter.com/forms.”

insert favourite hobbit swearwords here

I send a new ticket, cunningly choosing a new support topic this time: “Tweets, hashtags or media I’ve posted are missing from search”.

Twitter replies within minutes:

• “We believe that your account …. may be compromised by a user or a service not associated with Twitter. To secure your account and continue safely using Twitter… change your password.”

mutter mutter swear mutter

I reply, saying I have changed password on numerous occasions already, pleading them to start addressing my problem.

However, at this time, another spanner is tossed into the mix.

Twitter troubles, part 2

On my old account, I follow just shy of 200 persons. That’s a manageable number, in the sense that my timeline is reasonably active, but not so busy that I can’t keep up with what is going on there.

However, on May 6, my following count dropped to zero. And no more tweets from anyone showed on my timeline. Clicking on the “0” count said that I did not follow anyone anymore. At the same time, I started getting e-mails from people who wondered why I had unfollowed them.

When I searched for those accounts, though, they still showed as “following”. Um… I tried following some of them again, the following count increased, but clicking on the new count still said that I did not follow anyone, and after a couple of hours the count went down back to zero.

My following count at zero. No, I did not unfollow close to 200 accounts overnight.

Twitter support to the non-rescue, part 2

May 6-7

So I send in a new ticket, about “incorrect following or followers count“.

Twitter replies:

• “We believe that your account …. may be compromised by a user or a service not associated with Twitter. To secure your account and continue safely using Twitter… change your password.”

At which point I cave and change the password again, trying to see what I type on-screen through the angry scowl that pretty much blocks my eyesight.

I fail, so I have to reset the dang password again…

May 8-9

Now I have two tickets, and I send updates to both of them. The password change from the day before did not really work for either issue (who would have thought?), so I say as much and ask Twitter to step up and try solve the problem.

The day after, I receive answers to both my tickets:

1. “We just sent you a password reset for the Twitter account associated with your email address.”
2. “We just sent you a password reset for the Twitter account associated with your email address.”

Oh dear lord…

Log out of all accounts – again.
Change password – again.
Are my problems solved? No.
New mails to Twitter? Yes.

A few hours later, they happily reply:

1. “Thanks for reaching out. We’ll be happy to help you create a new account password.“
2. “Thanks for reaching out. We’ll be happy to help you create a new account password.“

&#?&#*?

My reply: “The password HAS BEEN CHANGED! This is not the issue! Etc.”

At this point, I run the nuclear option. I deactivate my account, then reactivate it a minute later. Others have reported that this might fix the following count issue.

May 10

The problems remain in the morning, although there are signs that the count issue is getting better. At the same time, Twitter replies:

1. “We had a look at your account, and it appears that everything is now resolved!”
2. “We had a look at your account, and it appears that everything is now resolved!”

Nah, everything is absolutely not resolved. My account and tweets are still missing from search, and my followers still get no notifications when I reply to them. Which I let Twitter know in my reply.

At the time I write this, I have had no further replies from them.

Meh…

So, Twitter (or their algorithms) obviously think that my account is suspicious somehow and have muted it from search and conversations. I am not sure what triggered that. Some theories:

1. I travel a lot, sometimes depending on VPN solutions for communication back home. So perhaps I showed to be logged in from multiple locations at the same time? Not least since I use Twitter on three different devices when travelling. However, that’s surely not an uncommon thing these days?
2. I used an external app to read tweets from my timeline and post it on this burrow. Mayhaps there were some issues related to that? Although, this is hardly an exceptional thing either.
3. Perhaps they find my tweets offensive somehow? Although, they are mostly about Tolkien, LOTRO and pictures of food, so… can it really be that bad? Unless Twitter is run by Michael Moorcock-fans while on a diet, I can’t really see it.
4. Someone actually hacked into my account and… well… did nothing at all with it? Nah.

The thing is, Twitter doesn’t say why they have a problem with my account. They seemingly just find it suspicious. Neither numerous support emails nor an insane amount of password changes have convinced them otherwise, and they have done nothing to help resolve the issue. Except asking me to change my password a few times too many.

After searching around a bit, I see that the following count bug crop up for others from time to time. That’s where I learned of the “deactivate + reactivate” trick, which apparently solved the count issue for me. Twitter did nada to help me with it, though.

What riles me up a bit is the absolutely underhanded way Twitter go about these account mutings. When I was logged in, everything looked to be in order. I got no warnings from Twitter that they had limited my account in any way, or that there were any remaining issues after I changed my password on April 1st. I have used the account without issue or warnings for close to 9 years, but this doesn’t seem to matter. They pretty much shadowbanned it, with no way out of the mess.

So, I hope you will follow my new account instead. You’ll be very welcome there! I’ll keep the old one up, for historical reasons. Or, in case the twitter algorithms decide to wreak havoc on my new one as well…