Twitter

I've been unbanned from Twitter.

Since my ban1, I've spent time periodically attempting to appeal said ban and even going as far to use an online postal service2 to formally request my data from Twitter's Data Protection Officer.

I've been on Twitter for 15 years. The thought of all that data being locked behind bullshit was infuriating. Anyhoo, last week I received this email:

Hello,

We’re writing to let you know that we've unsuspended your account. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope to see you back on X soon.

A little background: we have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal.

If you need to get in touch with us again, please file a report through your X app or our forms page, as this account isn’t monitored for replies.

Thanks,

X Support

Honestly, I don't believe this…especially when this "error" was discovered the same day The Guardian reported3 on the mass exodus from ElonNet. I think Twitter looked at their numbers and thought, "Our metrics are looking dreadful," and figured unbanning the banned would make us ever so grateful to be allowed in that our usage of Twitter would return to pre-Elon levels. Furthermore, you visit Twitter today and you'll find plenty of spam accounts within five minutes of scrolling.

Nah.

After the election4, I deleted my remaining Twitter accounts. I literally have no reason to remain on the platform.

Though I gotta admit, having access to my account again and seeing tweets from the people I follow who haven't yet aborted felt quite nice. It felt familiar. When I tabbed over to the "For You" feed though, reality set in. There's no saving this place, it's time to move on.

I also sent complaints to the Public Inquiry Unit of the Office of the Attorney General and got a response from them and Twitter the same day:

Hello,

We are responding to your request for information regarding account, @NetOpWibby. You can download the information with this URL:

https://records.twitter.com/disclaimer/randomLettersAndNumbers

The URL is valid for the next 7 days. You may download the information a total of three times. A brief explanation of the information is included with the download.

Additionally, your account has been reinstated, as it was suspended mistakenly. Accordingly, you can also download your data in your X account settings: https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/accessing-your-x-data

Best,

X Corp

Downloading your export from records.twitter.com is excrutiatingly slow. I recommend doing so from a desktop computer because it'll take hours. However, downloading an export from the Twitter UI is quite fast and will finish in under 10 minutes (for me). Interestingly, the former export will put your tweets in a single TXT file in JSON format with a PGP key at the top. The latter export will provide you with an HTML file so you can view your tweets in a browser.

Anyhoo, after I downloaded both exports I ran tweetXer5 by Luca Hammer6 to delete my content from the platform. The great thing about tweetXer is that it has a button that exports your bookmarks, something the official exports don't provide. The deletion process took maybe an hour and some change.

I haven't deleted this last account yet. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's to protect my username from being used maliciously? Maybe there's a chance Elon will get ousted? Maybe I'm being sentimental? Idk. I logged out. Most of the people I follow are active on other platforms so I'm not missing anything.

Some great perks to finally having my data is that 1) I can stop obsessing over not having it, 2) I can host my tweets7, and 3) I can train a local LLM on 15 years of content!

So long, Twitter! My online presence is fragmented due to your impending death but that no longer bothers me. After all, we used to have accounts across several forums and other online communities. Nature is healing.

Rebirth of an era. 🕸️

2024.12.19 UPDATE

Remember me sending Twitter snail mail to get my data? They've responded:

Hello,

We have received a request for certain information regarding an X account, @netopwibby, via post.

If you are still having issues downloading your X archive, please confirm in your reply.

Please note that all your X data is available directly via your X account, as explained in the following Help Center Page: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20172679

Sincerely,

X Corp

The top of the email says "Reply above this line." This is an interesting change from their usual, "this email is not monitored so don't reply" tagline. Maybe they're trying to be professional for once. If you're banned and trying to get your data, maybe try emailing dpo-support@x.com directly? YMMV