Late on Tuesday night, it seemed like Twitter was punishing its founder and CEO Jack Dorsey for a transgression. Several people trying to view his profile saw an error message showing that the account had been suspended. Obviously, that spawned rumors and speculation that a questionable tweet on the account had violated the site’s terms of use, and even those that said the account was possibly hacked.
Left red-faced, Twitter quickly brought the account back up, and Dorsey himself tweeted that it was the result of an internal mistake. Problem solved? Not quite. That last action further fueled an angry mob of people who questioned the company about the possibility that this was done to other user accounts as well.
Twitter is yet to respond to those questions, but this throws open several questions about the criteria used to suspend accounts.
Years ago, I worked on a project that was responsible for content moderation and account suspension on Facebook. We did it for about a year and a half, and during that time my team had recommended hundreds of account suspensions based on a wide range of policy violations from graphic content to racial remarks to outright cyberbullying.
What I learned during that time is that account management is completely under human control, and when things are controlled by people, mistakes do happen.
It’s not surprising that Twitter would accidentally suspend an account. These things happen all the time, and usually the user simply gets their suspension lifted after sending an email or raising a ticket. The problem in this case was that it was the founder’s account – possibly the very first Twitter account in the world.
The Real Meat and Potatoes of this Unfortunate Incident
So why are we, a tech/business news analysis website, covering it? The reason is that at the heart of this light-hearted (and possibly over-reported) incident hides an ugly truth: that we exercise little to no control over our digital selves.
Our accounts are at the mercy of tech companies that can – and sometimes do – randomly decide who to punish. No other industry has those privileges. Banks can’t do that, for example, and neither can most other business that operate in regulated environments.
But a tech company can easily suspend, shut down or even completely delete my account without my consent or even my knowledge. And that’s what worries me the most – the total lack of control from my perspective, and the total lack of accountability from the company’s angle.
Yes, we do sign up under clear – though verbose and legalese – terms and conditions, but how many people do you know that have actually read Twitter’s or Facebook’s ToCs? Or any online account that they sign up to, for that matter. And even if they did, is that going to stop them from signing up? Hardly.
What about mobile apps that can access everything from your contacts list to the deep, dark data within your smartphone or tablet? Are we even aware of what these “trusted” companies do with that information?
In the end, the problem is one of awareness and being more proactive about our security. That irate mob was right to question Dorsey and Twitter about other “accidental” account suspensions. We need more of that, in my opinion. Tech companies need to be more accountable to their stakeholders, even if that’s a humble user who contributes nothing to the company’s top line.
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