Twitter's Catch-22

On Sunday 10th February I collated tweets I had sent or had been sent to me in relation to disability bias at the BBC and referrals to the BBC Trust in a Storify. This was only my second attempt at creating a Storify narrative. I had referred to or quoted some two hundred folk. I assumed that the etiquette is to inform all those mentioned that they are included, in case they wish to raise any objections or caveats. So I began sending tweets apprising them. I eventually completed the task and a couple of hours later my account was suspended just as I was reading the "Twitter Rules".

Twitter did not send me any communication explaining what had happened and the reasons therefor, so I went to the help area and lodged an appeal, as apparently this is what one is supposed to do. In response to the appeal, I received the following email.

10th February

Hello,

We understand that you're contesting an account suspension. Please be sure to read this entire email; you will need to take further action in order to reopen your ticket and trigger a review of your account.

Twitter suspends accounts for a variety of reasons:

• If your account was suspended for aggressive following behavior, you should have received an email notification to the address associated with your Twitter account. You'll need to confirm that you've removed all prohibited following automation from your account, and will stop any manual aggressive following behavior. To expedite your appeal process, please review our Best Practices page if you haven't already, and then reply to this ticket with a confirmation that you understand our policies and will not engage in any prohibited following behavior.

• Please take a minute to review the Twitter Rules.

• If you received an email from admin@twitter.com saying 'you're being suspended' or that we're going delete your account, you're safe; the email is fake. More information here https://support.twitter.com/articles/204820-safety-fake-twitter-emails

• While we strive to avoid mistakes, it's also possible that your account was suspended in error. If after reviewing the Rules, you have no idea why your account was suspended, just reply to this email indicating as much, and we'll take another look at your case. Our apologies if the error turns out to be ours.

Thanks,

Twitter Support

So I replied:

10th February

Can you apprise me of the problem and how to put it aright, as per request. From my twitter a/c you will see I have already checked rules & regs, just before you suspended the a/c.

Cheers!

[Image description: Twitter logo on smartphone screen surrounded by water droplets which could be construed as tears. © unknown, http://cafedocbao.com/danh-muc/cong-nghe/thuong-hieu-nao-quot-mat-nho-quot-khi-facebook-thanh-loc-tai-khoan-ao--403386.html]

There was then no further communication from Twitter until...

12th February

Hello,

This account was suspended for sending multiple unsolicited messages using the @reply and/or mention feature. These features are intended to make communication between people on Twitter easier. Twitter monitors the use of these features to make sure they are used as intended and not for abuse. Using either feature to post messages to a bunch of users in an unsolicited or egregious manner is considered an abuse of its use, which results in account suspension.

For more information about these features, please visit our @Replies and Mentions help page:

http://support.twitter.com/articles/14023

Your account will be unsuspended within 24 hours. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal.

Be sure to review the Twitter Rules, as repeat violations may result in permanent suspension:

http://twitter.com/rules

Thank you,

Twitter Support
support.twitter.com
@support

I then attempted to gain clarity as Twitter's response did not really answer my query, in my opinion of course.

12th February

Dear Twitter Support,

Well, as you have not been specific about which tweets you are referring to, I cannot fully defend myself.

Whilst the tweets may have been unsolicited - all tweets are unsolicited, it is their very nature. However, I deny that any of my tweets are egregious. On the rare occasions I swear I use symbols to block out letters and do not consider that any of my tweets could be construed abusive. I have remained courteous at all times.

My tweets are directed at all my followers or specifically at individuals who might be interested due to their interests or positions. As you have failed to give concrete examples of any problems, it is difficult for me to know exactly what the issue(s) is(are).

As I have already advised you, you suspended my account just after I had finished reading the rules; so I very much doubt I shall find any help there.

No-one I have contacted has ever said they objected to one of my tweets and if anyone (or more than one!) has blocked me, I am assuming I would be informed of that. That being so, as far as I am aware I have not been blocked.

Whenever I come across spammers, I have blocked them and apprised you thus exercising my civic duty.

As the point of twitter is surely to network and share information, which is all I have been doing, I cannot see what issue you take with my tweets. I behave in the twittersphere as I would in the real world: with politeness, honesty and where possible humour.

I iterate that without your being more specific, it will be impossible for me to behave as you would have me. Please therefore provide me with a fuller explanation, than thus far given, as well as detailed guidance on how to avoid pitfalls.

Yours,

My attempt at gaining clarification was to all intents and purposes bounced.

12th February

You tried to update a request that has been closed. Please submit a new request at http://support.twitter.com/forms. You can also visit our help center at http://support.twitter.com for self-help solutions to common problems. Thanks!

I did as I was told, and once again I was bounced.

12th February

Hello,

If you're writing in about criquaer being suspended, this account is not currently suspended; please review any previous communications from Twitter for clarification about what the reason for the suspension may have been.

If you are writing in about an account other than criquaer being suspended, please refile the ticket from the suspended account.

If you are writing in about an issue other than your account being suspended -- including if you believe your account to have been deactivated or compromised -- please refile a ticket via the appropriate form; you'll find the forms athttps://support.twitter.com/forms.

Thanks,

Twitter Support

In effect, Twitter has made it impossible for me to truly determine what the problem is/was. I suspect it could be related to my Storify, but as Twitter have not been specific, I cannot be sure of this. Whilst, in future, I can refrain from apprising folk of their inclusion in a Storify - which seems both rude and impolite to me - if this is not the problem, I am very much likely to again commit the "egregious" travesty.

Twitter, has left me in a Catch-22 situation. All tweets one initiates are unsolicited, by their very nature. I doubt very much that sending less than two hundred tweets (as up to three folk were included per tweet) could in any reasonable person's mind be described as "egregious".

Either Twitter is a space to share ideas & information and to network or it is not, in which case what is the point of Twitter?

BBC Trust Refuses to Answer Complaints

Not only has the BBC taken more than the ten days they say they will need to reply, the Beeb has refused to answer the complaints raised in my blog, What's Wrong with the BBC's Disability Coverage?, and, furthermore, the institution has also included what I perceive as a veiled threat to publicise their response. However, given that the response is necessarily in the public interest, I publish their unexpurgated reply below. One might also wonder why the BBC cannot respond to my complaint as made. It seems to me their refusal is simply a bureaucratic means to avoid accountability. What does the reader think?

It might also be noteworthy that replies have not been forthcoming to tweets sent to the BBC Trust on the same matter.

Is it just my perspective, or does it appear the BBC has something to hide?

[Received Sunday 3rd February 2012 at 12.26]

Dear Mr Hunter

Reference ***-*******-******

Thanks for contacting the BBC.

Whilst we appreciate you getting in touch with us, in terms of the BBC's complaints process, you'll understand that we are unable to make reference to any comments published on any blog.

If you wish to formally register a personal complaint about specific and recent BBC programmes or services with us, we must ask that you explain to us yourself via our webform the nature of your unhappiness and what specific programming or specific output on what specific dates, or what specific policies or published BBC Editorial Guidelines you feel are involved.

Only then would be able to review your complaint and to investigate it in line with the our published complaints framework, and provide you with an individual and personal response to any concerns.

In closing, we note that you mention that our reply will be published on your blog and elsewhere, but as you will be aware copyright within published works - such as any reply email we may send you - rests with the author of that work rather than the recipient, and permission to reproduce cannot be assumed and is not automatically granted.

Thanks for taking the time to contact us.

Kind Regards

Mark Roberts

BBC Complaints

What's Wrong with the BBC's Disability Coverage?

Since the ConDems formed their coalition and thus the Government of the UK some two-and-a-half years ago, disabled and chronically sick folk have been living in abject fear as one policy after another is enacted and rolled out. (I personally have had to start taking anti-anxiety medication again.) Each successive action takes a little more independence and/or a little more care and/or a little more support away from us - actually a lot more. Before the ConDems started their 'welfare reform programme', the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) statistics confirm that we were more likely to be living in poverty than healthy or non-impaired individuals. There are some eleven million Brits with a disability (the latter figure from the ODI) or approximately one in eight of the population. That's a heck of a lot of individuals being negatively effected.

Report after report demonstrates the damage being done. These reports are often from respected organisations, such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, MIND, The Centre for Welfare Reform; but also from activists (often the tongue-in-cheek named bedtivists!) like WeAreSpartacus. Despite all this information and lobbying; despite facebook timelines, twitterfeeds and other social media outlets filling with the voices of disabled/chronically sick folk crying out, pleading, begging; despite both national and local press covering stories of deprivation, death, even of suicides (inter alia see for example Calum's List) directly related to ConDem actions; despite all this, the BBC News has failed to cover the issues regularly, except to permit the 'propaganda' of the approved government line of benefit fraudsters (disability benefit fraud is less than 1% of total disability benefits and is massively dwarfed by the billions lost in tax avoidance and evasion), scroungers and skivers. The exception being one Panorama programme.

This week there was a parliamentary debate to discuss ATOS, the French IT company, that assesses the sick/disabled benefit recipients to determine whether such folk are 'fit for work'. The debate was opened by Michael Meacher who was followed by twenty-six MPs from Labour, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru, Green, SNP and even Conservative party members who all echoed the hundreds of deaths, the catalogues of thousands of folk who have been incorrectly assessed and some absolute horror stories. The only voice that unconditionally supported the minister was a vice chair of the Tory party. Even the latter noted their was "universal condemnation" of ATOS in the House of Commons (column 1063 of Hansard). [For non-UK readers, Hansard is the official record of the UK Parliament.]

Despite this non-partisan, near unanimity; despite the details of mistreatment, statistics on deaths from the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP); despite social media being filled with comments on the proceedings (on twitter read the #esaSOS or #ATOSdebate feeds); despite The Guardian, The Independent, the Daily Express, The Star, the Morning Star, The Week and the London Evening Standard all covering the deaths; despite all this, once again, BBC News failed to cover the story on the BBC News channel, the BBC's television news bulletins nor on their website.

At this point one has to ask why such a debate with obvious newsworthiness and of interest to many of the 11,000,000 disabled Brits and their carers was not covered by the BBC. The BBC is supposedly impartial: but surely it is showing partiality in favour of the government's viewpoints by failing to report.

Yesterday, I tweeted about this to the BBC Trust (@bbctrust on twitter, but just insert bbctrust with no hashtag to see the comments submitted) and asked others to do likewise, and dozens did just that. So far no response - but it was a snowy day, perhaps the relevant employees did not make it into the office. Should a reply be forthcoming, I shall of course post an update.

However, one has to ask why should the BBC fail to report on stories. It occurs to me that there are several possibilities: not knowing; negligence; wilfulness; under orders; squeamishness. The Beeb cannot say they do not know because many of us tweet and email information to the organisation. Negligence might be conceivable if it were just once or twice, but not very likely for two-and-a-half years. Wilfuness: is the BBC really so determined to quash disabled voices and, if so, why? Could it be that Aunty has been told that they cannot broadcast non-approved viewpoints. If this is the case, who or what is giving such orders? Yesterday a fellow twitterer suggested that the BBC is just squeamish about disability issues. However, given their unwillingness to cover the Paralympics such a perspective seems a distinct possibility.

Many disabled and chronically sick folk no longer trust the British Broadcasting Corporation to represent us or our standpoints fairly. We have switched to alternative sources of information and news. In the long term the exclusion of voices will necessarily militate against the justification for the licence-fee. Indeed, it has even been suggested that all disabled/chronically sick licence-fee payers should refuse to do so in future.

The BBC is supposed to have a public-service and an educational remit. Such obviously extends to the sick and disabled viewers and their families and carers. It's time the BBC became accountable to the public who pay for its existence. It's time the Beeb put its house in order. The time is now.

[Image description: WOW codee for smart-phones.]

If you want to help the cause: please sign the WOWpetition which can be followed on facebook or twitter (@wowpetition & @wowpetitionchat) or join us on www.wowpetitionforum.co.uk; additionally why not contact the BBC Trust at the link above and tell them what you think.



For update see: BBC Trust Refuses to Answer Complaints