Can twitter temporarily shut you down for excessive use?
Aeropolowoman, a journalist who was live tweeting the Mumbai terror attacks from her home in Florida, says that Twitter disabled her "direct messaging" and "@reply" facility for an hour citing "excessive use".
..during my 17-hour Mumbai tweeting session, Twitter shut me down twice (an hour each time) for my excessive use. I was unable to Direct Message or Reply to anyone anywhere! Those two hours were critical during a disaster that was still fluid.
She also reported the issue to Twitter support but it went unanswered. Twitter’s Terms of Use document doesn’t mention anything about blocking related to "excessive use" but they do seem to impose some "undocumented" limits even if you publish updates from the web interface as aeropolowoman was doing. Anyone else had a similar experience?
Her full account sent in response to my preview post on Mumbai Terror Attacks.
Someone had sent me a Tweet from the ground at the scene in Mumbai and was upset because no one was covering the story, so I started – from Florida.
At first, my sources were from witnesses at the scene, then I started getting pleas for help from guests in the Taj. In a short time businesses and families around the world were asking for help in finding their employees and relatives.
Because I wasn’t certain of the veracity of some of the requests I needed to verify them via Google search before I responded to the Tweets. While communicating with frantic hotel guests who wanted their names and hotel room numbers made public I didn’t reveal that information for their own safety. I was able to tweet back to employees and families that the people they were looking for were either not in the hotel at the time, or were in the hotel taking cover.
With the speed of Twitter I was able to receive a message, search it out and verify it, and then send out my response on an average of one tweet every 30 seconds.
Some of my Tweets were sent directly to Mumbaikars who had gone to sleep the night before and would have been unaware of the ongoing slaughter. Those Tweets alerted them to stay in their homes with the doors locked because there were terrorists still running around in a stolen police van, and that all schools were closed so stay home.
Also, Twitter enabled me to tweet the photo of one of the terrorists they were trying to identify, the license plate numbers of the stolen vehicles, as well as blood donation requests from St. Georges and J.J. hospitals.
Unfortunately many hours of my tweets did not include #mumbai in the message which would have enabled me to communicate with an even greater population.
However, during my 17-hour Mumbai tweeting session, Twitter shut me down twice (an hour each time) for my excessive use. I was unable to Direct Message or Reply to anyone anywhere! Those two hours were critical during a disaster that was still fluid. That sort of situation with Twitter needs to be fixed immediately in case a situation like this tragedy happens again. Well, when is happens again somewhere in the world.
My journalism career has included both print and broadcast news, but nothing addresses the immediacy of the breaking news like Twitter. At this point I don’t think we can "under" estimate Twitter’s value.
Related: Is Twitter Blocked?
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-excessive-use-policy/5894/
Reader Comments
Have you asked @ev and @biz about it…?
Written by Bruce Wagner on 12.08.08
Here’s the simple fact of life: DO NOT USE TWITTER DURING A CRISIS OR DISASTER. Yes it gets the news out faster, but — as shown — it is not designed or intended for critical information gathering and distribution.
Written by Larry on 12.08.08
I think that should be fixed.
Written by John on 12.08.08
Every online needs to have an excessive use policy to protect itself from the prying eyes of the spammers. The success of the service depends upon its ability to differentiate between spammers and actual users.
Written by Siddharth Agarwal on 12.08.08
I too was at twitter without a break during that Mumbai ordeal. I was tweeting continuously and reading other tweets. For me twitter.com was alright and never got any bad experience. But, in the past i got a message saying that “twitter is busy and please come back after sometime” – never during the mumbai attacks.
Written by Prashanth on 12.08.08
To Bruce Wagner, During the total of two hours that I was on a “timeout” I tried to reach @ev and @biz for immediate response, as well as any person I could find who worked for Twitter. No one was available. I sent seven or eight complaint letters during the time I was shut down venting my frustration at the random cutoff. If they shut me down because they feared I was spamming I made it clear in my complaints that I wasn’t spam but was a journalist covering a life and death situation in a city under attack. In my complaints I suggested they come up with an override system to keep the links open during disasters such as Mumbai. I was actually cut off a third time but I just quit trying at that point and logged off the computer completely. aero
Written by aeropolowoman on 12.08.08
At that point, I think I would have created a brand new twitter account…. and see if I still had the same problem… :)
Written by Bruce Wagner on 12.09.08