[Air-L] A Question About Twitter Suspensions

[Stuart Shulman]

Marco,

Thank you for the excellent and thought provoking paper. I have been
digging into the data and the story is somewhat complex. There are accounts
from December 2017 that have the "from_user" showing as suspended, while
the same user on the same week generated Tweets that remain live on Twitter
today. I have also found live RTs where the "from_user" account is reported
as "does not exist" and there are other permutations that seem to defy the
logic of account suspensions and account deletions.

I hand labeled 1,500 Q-likely Tweets from the December 2017 set as follows:

Code, Count, Pct.
Suspended Account, 711, 47.40%
Deleted Tweet, 509, 33.93%
Q Signals, 165, 11.00%
No Sign of Q 115 7.67%

I have documented this research in the first 7 of the 33 videos here, but I
feel there are still many unanswered questions:
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7543134

~Stu

Dr. Stuart ShulmanU.S. Soccer Federation C-Licensed Coach
(#boycott #thebigsix)



On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 10:29 AM Marco T Bastos <toledobastos at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Stu,
>
> Are you checking the usernames or the user IDs?if you’re checking the
> usernames, chances are the live accounts were recreated after being removed
> (new user ID, same username). When Twitter removes an account the username
> is offered again in the pool of available handles, so banned users can
> create a new account and take over their previous username. Suspension is a
> bit different and AFAIK it doesn’t remove the username, but you may be
> coming across a single username that existed over several user IDs. You may
> find this piece helpful:
>
> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764221989772
>
> HTH,
> Marco
>
> On Sun, 4 Apr 2021 at 14:48 <air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 12:05:45 -0400
> > From: Stuart Shulman <stuart.shulman at gmail.com>
> > To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: [Air-L] A Question About Twitter Suspensions
> > Message-ID:
> >         <CAJd4SndAuhOoiwVS1W7=
> > oXjdCgBAzkSinLhPqVfMH3x7TNzq0w at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > When I try to display Tweets from December 2017 with clear QAnon signals
> > (hashtags, buzzwords, other markers) many return the message "cannot
> > display tweet - account is suspended," which makes sense given what we
> are
> > living through. However, I then go search for some of those same
> suspended
> > Twitter handles and find while some are indeed suspended, others are not
> > suspended. Some usernames with hundreds of thousands of tweets that go
> back
> > to 2011, and were spreading #QAnon, #TheStormIsHere, #WhoIsQ, and
> > #FollowTheWhiteRabbit and related content between December 8-12, 2017,
> are
> > alive and well on Twitter. I have not seen this before and I cannot
> explain
> > it. My question is: Can a Twitter account show as suspended for certain
> > content on the same day it is live with older and more recent content?
> Have
> > others encountered this? Can an account suspension be revoked or else
> > applied to only certain content? One example of many I ran into today: I
> > have a record of a Q-centric Tweet from a suspended account but the
> account
> > itself is in fact live and following current other live Q-related
> accounts
> > that also are not suspended. It follows only 72 accounts (a dazzling
> > collection of Q-related conspiracy experts) but has almost 5,000 heavily
> > MAGA-leaning followers, which takes a certain Internet dexterity to
> > achieve. Is there a good paper out there on the legal and procedural
> > actions related to suspended, semi-suspended, or suspended but then
> > restored Twitter users?
> >
> > Dr. Stuart ShulmanU.S. Soccer Federation C-Licensed Coach
> >
> >
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