last night, for the first time ever, i got suspended from twitter. more specifically, i got suspended on my private twitter account. this came as a shock to me, because i know i didn't do anything wrong. so, i wanted to write about what it was like.

what its like getting suspended

i was at work when i opened twitter, and i saw the following pop-up on my phone:

this is unique, because usually you get a full screen message stating why you were suspended. going to the twitter website also yielded nothing:

so... i checked my email. there wasn't a single email. usually, you get an email whenever an action is taken on your account. this is when the realization that i probably won't be getting this account back kicked in.

appealing

the only thing that was really left to do was to appeal. so, that's what i did. i wrote out an appeal, and almost instantly i got the following email in my inbox:

Case# 0370151540: Your account is suspended or locked

Hello,
Your account was suspended due to violations of X Rules. After reviewing for reinstatement your account will not be restored.
Thanks,
X Support

no matter how many times i tried to appeal, i got just this same email, over and over again.

i give up

eventually, i got tired of trying, realized it was of no use, and just threw in the towel. i announced to everyone that i got suspended from twitter, and moved on.

why?

so, earlier i said that i had did nothing wrong. that is correct. however, my friend was earlier talking about a thing that made me realize "this is probably the reason".
dimden has a popular twitter extension called "OldTwitterLayout". this completely transforms twitter into the layout that it had before the 2019 desktop redesign. it's honestly a really well made extension. but in order to make it work as well as it does, something had to be made.
most extensions just inject additional code and css on top of twitter to make things work. but oldtwitter is unique. its an entirely separate client. but the thing is, twitter banned third party clients quite some time ago. you can probably see where this is going.
i am not the only person this has happened to:

View on GitHub

My account has been permanently suspended #828

I can't think of anything else that I could have done to violate the "X" Rules other than using this browser extension, and I have been permanently suspended from Twitter without any explanation. If I appeal, I immediately get a rejection email within thirty seconds.
I'd be careful using this.

hello, its me from the future here. this is a really hastily written thing about more things i tried. i will actually write this later, maybe. i tried calling twitter support. all i got was an automated message saying the number doesn't exist anymore. i bought twitter blue for the priority support. support is offered over direct message. guess what you cant do when suspended. that was a waste of $3, but i can view tweets i wrote pre suspension, which is nice.
you cannot download your data while suspended. so thats great. i tried dickriding elon in my appeal request. didn't work. eh.
Sent from my iPhone, so reply may be brief.