Imagine my surprise this morning when, without warning, my shiny new Twitter account (@d_seaman) was suspended and taken offline.
No more tweets for you. You now have 0 followers.
My crime? Talking too much about Occupy Wall Street (I'm not an Occupier, but as a blogger and journalist it strikes me as one of the most important stories out there -- hence the constant coverage), and talking too much about the controversial detainment without trial provisions contained in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would basically shred the Bill of Rights and subject American citizens to military police forces. The same level of civil rights protection that enemy combatants in a cave in Afghanistan receive!
But no, my tweets were 'annoying our users,' according to Twitter's suspension notice.
Well, not so much: nearly everyone following me appreciated my coverage of this issue, when few others in the media have had an interest in the NDAA or the widespread Occupy turnouts all over the country last night.
I have contacted Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, and several tech journalists hoping to get some answers. I don't want to start a big thing -- I just want my account reactivated. This is America, not Iran, thanks in advance.
Also: it's worth questioning why #NDAA and #OWS, which are receiving consistently VERY high volumes of conversation/tweet traffic are not trending at all on Twitter, yet their featured 'worldwide trends' this morning include: Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, #myfavoritefood, and Kindergarten Cop.
UPDATE 1:19pm ET: I am apparently not the only user booted today for discussing NDAA and Occupy movement protests. See the screenshot below.
I don't write articles every day, but when I do, they are on subjects you should know about. You can follow me on Google+ or on Twitter to see my newest posts and keep in touch.
UPDATE -- EDITOR'S NOTE: Business Insider reached out to Twitter PR to ask them about this. The company said they "never mediate content. Period." They would not comment on this particular account out of privacy concerns. So it sounds as though this was either an automated suspension (for reasons that have yet to be determined) or a mistake. David Seaman has asked for additional details. He'll provide it if/when he gets it.
UPDATE -- DAVID SEAMAN: At approximately 7:37pm ET, my Twitter account was restored, and I received the following message from Twitter support: "Hello, Twitter has automated systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk. Unfortunately, it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. I've restored your account; sorry for the inconvenience. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal."
At 8:29pm ET, a second email from Twitter support was received: "Hello, As a clarification, your account was suspended twice; the initial suspension was due to a number of unsolicited duplicate or near-duplicate messages being sent 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 an automated account suspension. However, the second suspension after you navigated the self-unsuspension page was due to a known error we are working to fix; our apologies for the re-suspension. Please let me know if you have any questions."
UPDATE 12/19/11, 4:50pm ET -- DAVID SEAMAN: Before anyone rushes to conclusions and labels me a sensationalist, I'd highly encourage all of my readers check out the piece just published over in the International Business Times (link). It presents some pretty damning evidence that this may be happening to others as we speak.