X Randomly Banning Users for "Inauthentic Behavior"
46 points
2 hours ago
| 9 comments
| old.reddit.com
| HN
matsemann
49 minutes ago
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"X" is in a weird place now. The monetization of engagement absolutely wrecked the feeds from my cursory glance. Just ragebaiting, vague posting, abuse (for a while, every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini" and it would post sexualized images of them). Someone vent viral by posting a picture of Steve Jobs' daughter (?), and people try to replicate that as that now generates money. Replies to posts are just bluechecks being insane, or farm accounts spamming unrelated stuff hoping to get impressions and generate some dollars.

I used to follow only cycling/urban related accounts for the town I live in. Most of them left, so maybe that's making it hard for the algorithm, but my feed is now just far right immigration propaganda by blue checks, or lots of US issues (I'm not in the US). Not a nice place to be, but I can see how it can be addicting / trigger something in the brain.

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leosanchez
43 minutes ago
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> every female posting would have someone in the replies doing "grok, put OP in a bikini"

I get these tweets randomly in my Timeline as well. What I don't understand is why does Twitter think I should know about someone asking Grok to put xxx in Bikini

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mcintyre1994
17 minutes ago
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My guess would be that they amplify tweets involving Grok as a form of advertising. I think they disabled tagging Grok for non paying users, so I guess they do it to advertise its capabilities. And because their user base is so toxic that mostly means amplifying things like that.
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fabian2k
36 minutes ago
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This is a command to the Grok bot and used to generate an image based on the post and that specific prompt. After significant outrage they disabled it for non-paying users at least, not sure if they changed more about this later.
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blitzar
33 minutes ago
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If the "algorithm" thinks that I want to see <command to the Grok bot> from random accounts so jams lots of them into my feed then it is a pretty dumb algorithm
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ZeroGravitas
27 minutes ago
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Maybe X thinks X users might be unaware of the ability to pay money to see other random X users naked, so it's basically an advert for non-consensual sexual image generation.
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eucyclos
23 minutes ago
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I've been saying that about a lot of algorithms for a while now, but I think the issue is more that they're smart algorithms optimized for the wrong thing
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blitzar
27 minutes ago
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vague posting is the current meta
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Mario9382
45 minutes ago
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I created an account in X yesterday because I'm trying to get more involved into building in public and the social aspect of development and I was shocked to see nowadays you can pay for X premium where the more you pay, the more interactions you get to your tweets.

At the end I just deleted it and created an account into Bluesky instead.

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indy
2 minutes ago
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Out of the anger inducing frying pan and into the group-think fire.
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charcircuit
23 minutes ago
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>X premium where the more you pay, the more interactions you get to your tweets.

You are confusing X ads for X premium or you are mistaken.

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matsemann
15 minutes ago
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It's probably not "the more you pay the more interactions you get", but there definitely is "if you pay, you get more interactions". Blue checks are boosted in top of replies etc., and is ironically often the exact people you don't want to see.
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croes
14 minutes ago
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Doesn’t matter what it is called. You can buy interactions, that’s like buying fake followers.
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crmrc114
2 hours ago
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Posting here since I am curious if any friends on HN have faced the same AI based banning. I have had a Twitter account since like 2008 and they just did this- like folks on reddit are reporting appeals just get robo-rejected. Is there any way to reach a human at X? I have some SWEs and SREs in my linkedin account as second and third person contacts but reaching out there just feels wrong. Putting AI in charge of Auto banning 10+ year old paying accounts is insane. There is another thread on this same issue here https://www.reddit.com/r/twitterhelp/comments/1sfn3l4/has_an...
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m00dy
12 minutes ago
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Nothing is wrong during AI revolution.
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ggm
1 hour ago
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Good time to heed the signal and leave. It's an anti-pattern for humanity.
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crmrc114
1 hour ago
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Yeah I know- I have accounts on bluesky and mastodon as well- but I try not to isolate myself to one network, there are plenty of non-usa accounts that were only on X who I followed for technology and art/photography stuff. shikata ga nai I guess.
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Myzel394
53 minutes ago
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I've also been suspended for breaking their terms and services, even though I haven't done anything wrong. It was probably my VPN. Luckily, my account got unsuspended, but I ain't using that platform anymore
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heavensteeth
1 hour ago
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Most social media has been has been utterly untenable forever, but Twitter and Discord are the most troublesome in my experience. It's so hard to create and use a new account on those sites without the rigmarole of captcha (due to suspicious activity) -> banned (due to suspicious activity) -> captcha (due to suspicious activity) -> verify email (due to suspicious activity) -> banned (due to suspicious activity) -> verify phone number (due to suspicious activity). Then, want to follow someone, or join a guild? Hmm.. your account reputation is too low. Try again in a week?

I don't know how people do it. I can only figure it's my fault for running Linux or Firefox or not Signing in with Google™, upsetting the data harvesting overlords.

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throwawaymobule
1 hour ago
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Back when they still had staffed support, and were called twitter, I'd have to spend a week or more back and forth with them when I inevitably hit the demand for a phone number. Most of the time the account got unlocked.

This was usually a few weeks/months after they were in the news for selling people's phone numbers.

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dminik
24 minutes ago
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I needed to create a Facebook account to verify some Facebook posting functionality worked as we wanted it to. Ok, easy. Tried using my work email. No, not allowed. Hmm, try creating a new email. Nope. Tried to create an account on my personal device with a personal email. Nuh-uh.

I've never seen a service so opposed to me using it. There's no option for dev accounts either.

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jerrygoyal
2 minutes ago
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my business account got banned as well 7 days ago. I created an appeal but didn't receive any response. crickets.
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m00dy
6 minutes ago
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looks like the incident happened a month ago ?
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blitzar
29 minutes ago
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Free speech absolutism ladies and gentlemen.
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