I did not break the Twitter Rules

There is a loophole in the system for “ban evasion” that is either being exploited, or is completely broken and needs to be fixed and remediated immediately

I was suspended for “ban evasion” of a ban that was successfully appealed and reversed, nearly a week after I was unsuspended because I did not break the rules.

Leaving aside how illogical the idea of evading a ban that was reversed is, I did not break either the letter or the spirit of the Twitter rules. Let’s review.

According to Twitter, the ban evasion policy exists “to help keep everyone using Twitter safe and ensure they can participate freely in the public conversation” which is the opposite effect of this suspension.

Twitter “prohibit[s] attempts to circumvent prior enforcement, including through the creation of new accounts.”

According to the policy, the priority is the creation of new accounts and attempts to circumvent prior enforcement, neither of which I did.

Let’s take a look at “What is in violation of this policy?”

You can‘t circumvent permanent suspensions.

That’s why I was appealing through the official Twitter mechanism and sending information to them. I have invested a huge amount my account, why would I break the rules?

“If an account has been permanently suspended for severe violations of the Twitter Rules”

I did not break the rules at all, much less “severely.” Twitter didn’t even make me delete the “offending” tweets. Since this is a conditional phrase and I did not break any rules, this clause is not allowed:

“Twitter reserves the right to also permanently suspend any other account we believe the same account holder or entity may be operating in violation of our earlier suspension, regardless of when the other account was created.”

Let’s pretend for a minute that I did break the rules — which again I did not. The rest of this is extremely vague:

• What does “we believe” mean? How do you determine this? We’ll come back to this point.

• What does “operate” mean?

Here’s what’s on my feed when I’m permanently suspended:

Note the specific behavior I was prohibited from doing.

• Tweet, RT, Like

• Create new accounts

I did NOT do any of these things at all. I used a long-held shared account to get information to Twitter Safety. I specifically avoided these actions because that’s what I was told to do by Twitter.

You can’t circumvent a Twitter suspension, enforcement action, or anti-spam challenge.

I did not do any of these things.

This includes any behavior intended to evade any Twitter remediation, such as creating a new account or repurposing an already-existing account.

Again, I did not do this. I did not “repurpose” anything. I logged into an old account to get information. I wish I could show Twitter the account. There have been no “tweets, retweets or likes” in MONTHS. I specifically avoided this behavior because that is what Twitter said my suspension was for and I could not circumvent it.

You can’t circumvent a Twitter suspension by operating or having some else operate…

I did not do this.

You can’t allow someone who has been permanently suspended from Twitter to permanently take over or temporarily operate your account.

Neither of these things happened. I did not “take over,” I used a shared account I used for a year to monitor other Twitter accounts, to monitor Twitter accounts and send the information to Twitter Safety.

You can’t imitate…

No one did this.

I was NOT in violation of this policy either the letter or the spirit.

Not only did I not break the rules, the consequences for this policy are seriously broken.

The consequences for violating this policy depend of the severity of the violation and of the accounts’ previous history of violations.

I do not have a previous history of violations beyond two dumb 12 hour suspensions from mass reporting that I didn’t bother to appeal.

Repurposing existing accounts to replace or mimic a suspended account is a violation of the ban evasion policy; it will result in permanent suspension at first detection.

“Detection” is this key word here. What was “detected”? By a person or an algorithm? Since I was suspended well after my ban was reversed, this is either a broken security sweep that suspends accounts incorrectly, or this is being weaponized.

Twitter’s own policy states that a permanent ban is for “severe violations” and that account-level enforcement is only taken

at the account level if we determine that the person has violated the Twitter Rules in a particularly egregious way, or has repeatedly violated them even after receiving notifications from us.

None of this applies to me at all.

In summary, I did not violate any Twitter rules and every policy and requirement that would sustain any account-level action, much less a permanent ban, does not apply at all.

Twitter must reverse my suspension immediately. Please feel free to share this on Twitter and tag @Twitter @TwitterSafety @TwitterSupport. And if you want you can add #FreeJimStewartson