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My Twitter *Might* Be Restricted?
2 years ago
General
Heyo! So, in the latest bit of “Twitter sucks” news, it seems like my main Twitter, AhnikSaur, *might* be being restricted to make my content less visible.
I say “might” because I never received any notice from Twitter that this was happening. But Twitter has been shadowbanning and otherwise throttling access to individual accounts behind the scenes for a long time, so that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not happening.
Recently some accounts such as Kajy’s have been affected in similar ways (see their journal about it here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10585108/ ). However, what I’ve generally heard from those affected is that they were advised of the action via email and I haven’t received any such email, so what’s happening to my account may be something different.
The reasons I think my account might be restricted in some way are:
- Friends have mentioned to me that they never see any of my content in their timelines.
- A friend has mentioned to me that they are not getting notifications for tweet replies from me on their tweets.
- A friend has mentioned to me that they aren’t getting notifications for my tweets even though they have post notifications turned on for my Twitter.
- When checking my account on the shadowban checker https://shadowban.yuzurisa.com/ it isn’t able to test my account for shadowbanning because it isn’t even able to confirm my account exists. My other Twitter accounts and even those of people affected by the restrictions Kajy is facing are at least discoverable by the shadowban checker, but my main doesn’t get any results at all, which is what you'd expect if my account were a private account.
EDIT: I had been checking repeatedly all day and getting no results for my account, but when I checked again just *after* posting this NOW I'm getting some results (which indicate there's a search suggestion ban on my account but at least it was able to find the account.)
So it seems that in some way or another my account is being restricted/hidden/muted/etc. by Twitter and that sucks!
I’m currently debating what to do about this but I wanted to get a quick journal out about it to let people know and see what others have to say and how many others are experiencing this.
And of course, gotta finish off by plugging other places to find me as I have done increasingly often throughout the past year. :P
Itaku
Currently active and posting to it at the same time as FA.
https://itaku.ee/profile/ahnik
Mastodon
Not currently active but will be soon!
https://meow.social/@ahnik
Telegram Channel
Currently active. Gets everything FA gets and also WIPs. Sometimes if an image has a lot of alts this is the only place where I post all of them.
https://t.me/AhnikWIPs
Discord
Not currently using this for posting art.
Mannnnnn, I REALLY don’t wanna resort to a Discord server but if I run out of other options I guess it’d be on the table. x3
Bluesky?
I WANT to try this but it’s an invite-only beta right now.
Literally just learned this is a thing today and I need to learn more about it, but if it’s going to be what it purports to be, it could be great! If anyone’s got a spare invite code and is willing to toss it my way, I would be incredibly grateful. 🙏💚
I say “might” because I never received any notice from Twitter that this was happening. But Twitter has been shadowbanning and otherwise throttling access to individual accounts behind the scenes for a long time, so that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not happening.
Recently some accounts such as Kajy’s have been affected in similar ways (see their journal about it here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10585108/ ). However, what I’ve generally heard from those affected is that they were advised of the action via email and I haven’t received any such email, so what’s happening to my account may be something different.
The reasons I think my account might be restricted in some way are:
- Friends have mentioned to me that they never see any of my content in their timelines.
- A friend has mentioned to me that they are not getting notifications for tweet replies from me on their tweets.
- A friend has mentioned to me that they aren’t getting notifications for my tweets even though they have post notifications turned on for my Twitter.
- When checking my account on the shadowban checker https://shadowban.yuzurisa.com/ it isn’t able to test my account for shadowbanning because it isn’t even able to confirm my account exists. My other Twitter accounts and even those of people affected by the restrictions Kajy is facing are at least discoverable by the shadowban checker, but my main doesn’t get any results at all, which is what you'd expect if my account were a private account.
EDIT: I had been checking repeatedly all day and getting no results for my account, but when I checked again just *after* posting this NOW I'm getting some results (which indicate there's a search suggestion ban on my account but at least it was able to find the account.)
So it seems that in some way or another my account is being restricted/hidden/muted/etc. by Twitter and that sucks!
I’m currently debating what to do about this but I wanted to get a quick journal out about it to let people know and see what others have to say and how many others are experiencing this.
The Obligatory Plug
And of course, gotta finish off by plugging other places to find me as I have done increasingly often throughout the past year. :P
Itaku
Currently active and posting to it at the same time as FA.
https://itaku.ee/profile/ahnik
Mastodon
Not currently active but will be soon!
https://meow.social/@ahnik
Telegram Channel
Currently active. Gets everything FA gets and also WIPs. Sometimes if an image has a lot of alts this is the only place where I post all of them.
https://t.me/AhnikWIPs
Discord
Not currently using this for posting art.
Mannnnnn, I REALLY don’t wanna resort to a Discord server but if I run out of other options I guess it’d be on the table. x3
Bluesky?
I WANT to try this but it’s an invite-only beta right now.
Literally just learned this is a thing today and I need to learn more about it, but if it’s going to be what it purports to be, it could be great! If anyone’s got a spare invite code and is willing to toss it my way, I would be incredibly grateful. 🙏💚
(And Twitter is designed to encourage that behaviour -- the 'For You' timeline is a cornerstone of Twitter's financial model.)
But at least you already have 12k followers and is pretty well-estabilished as an artist too. Trust me, it could be way worse. ;w;
Like, maybe if these things were consistent, but from what I've seen, it seems to be almost random what works and what doesn't, from day to day. One day I see replies from someone, the next, I don't. One day I don't get notifications from an account, the next day I do.
It's such a mess. ._.
I've made a backup Twitter for now juuuuuust in case I decide to start fresh on a new account. x3
https://twitter.com/Authentic_EI