Suspended by Twitter - June 18, 2023

After "careful review" my account has been suspended. No email, no explanation.

Well it happened. On Father’s day (Sunday morning).

The suspension came moments after I posted a Father’s Day thread for my daughter.

Weirdly, when it happened it froze my browser (and my entire computer) for a couple of minutes. When it fixed itself, I found my Twitter account had been severely limited.

I was suspended once in the pre-Elon era, last October, after arguing that the COVID vaccine was harmful. Twitter sent me an email explaining the reason and I was forced to delete the tweet to return. I didn’t really care at the time, as I had ~50 followers on Twitter.

But this time I didn’t even get an email. After “careful review” they suspended my account, but they didn’t even bother to say what for?

Interestingly, yesterday I finally was granted a blue check again after cancelling it for about a month. I pledged to upload many of my videos yesterday and started with my latest song “Meet the New Boss” which playfully pokes fun at the new Twitter CEO. Interesting the suspension came less than 24 hours later.

I also made some memes last night making fun of Peter Hotez and they got some attention:

Just yesterday Elon pledged to crack down on accounts that use “non-sequitur self-promotion” which is Orwellian af if you ask me.

I’ve been here before. YouTube banned me after 16 years in January, and they didn’t bother to give me 3 strikes first, nor did they even care to offer even the vaguest of explanations or justifications.

I had ~70 Twitter followers when my channel was deleted, so I couldn’t really get the word out. Now with 7k followers a few months later, is my reach big enough to Streisand my way out of this one? If not, I’m in trouble. Twitter was the last platform I had with a significant voice. I don’t have a backup this time.

I was going to try to record an album of my new songs this Summer, but without Twitter, YouTube, BandCamp etc, how can I promote it?

This is pretty messed up, but it’s par for the course.

I have a feeling it’ll all work out eventually, but in the meantime it’s just another headache.

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