Are there more and more account suspensions on Twitter?

The social network Twitter.

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• Several user accounts - activists, journalists and even unions - have been suspended in recent weeks on Twitter.

• Contacted by

  20 Minutes

  , the social network recognizes an increase in the number of suspended accounts, "which would be mainly due to the improvement of its means of moderation and the hardening of its rules of use".

• But this increase is also explained by the multiplication of coordinated reporting campaigns, called raids.

Is the social network Twitter going into censorship?

In recent weeks, many Internet users have said they have noticed a change in the moderation policy of the platform, which in practice would be more inclined to delete accounts for reasons that are not often very clear, and even sometimes questionable.

Several influential user accounts - activists, journalists and even unions - were thus suspended this summer, causing widespread outrage from Twittos.

The writer Bérengère Viennot is one of the first to be publicly moved by the treatment she suffered.

She saw her Twitter account suspended on July 18 due to a message published during the fire in Nantes cathedral.

“Ok it's really sad but still it's beautiful, a burning cathedral,” she tweeted.

The social network reminded him in a message that it was "forbidden to engage in harassment of a person, or to incite others to do so" and that this included "the fact of wishing or hoping that a person suffers physical harm ”.

"Without prior warning or adversarial proceedings"

In order to regain access to his account, Bérengère Viennot had to delete his tweet.

The writer is not the only one to have come up against the more restrictive rules of the platform.

The Twitter account of the Union of Police Commissioners (SCPN) was also suspended at the end of August for "breach of the rules relating to the publication of violent threats".

In question, a message which concerned the driver killed by a gendarme after a refusal to obey on the A20 motorway.

If the suspension of its account was lifted a few hours later, the SCPN “was surprised that the account of an institutional, representative and apolitical union was thus suspended without prior warning or adversarial proceedings”.

Laurent de Boissieu, journalist at

also saw his account suspended following a message in which he considered that "revealing the real name of an account should be part of the duty of information".

“So let's know: it is forbidden on Twitter to question pseudonymity / anonymity and the balance between respect for private life and the right to information.

It's crazy, but Twitter has the right to prohibit it in its terms of use, ”explained the journalist.

My Twitter account was suspended for several hours, an unprecedented experience for me.

My thoughts:

-Twitter is master at home, so it is his right.

- Still annoying not to receive an email from @TwitterFrance explaining which tweet supposedly broke its rules.

1/5 pic.twitter.com/GY4eloYMoN

- Laurent de Boissieu (@ldeboissieu) August 11, 2020

"Reinforcement of moderation means" and "hardening of the rules of use"

“We apply our rules wisely and impartially to all users of our service.

When we identify accounts that violate these rules, we take enforcement action, ”explains

Twitter

to

France.

The platform recognizes an increase in the number of suspended accounts, which would be mainly due to the improvement of its moderation means and the tightening of its rules of use.

"Tweets that break the rules" are increasingly spotted and processed by automatic moderation tools that can make the decision to suspend an account without human intervention.

Twitter specifies that the addition of a new rule in July 2019 "on dehumanizing expressions" is also at the origin of the explosion in the number of accounts prosecuted for violating its policy on hateful conduct.

"Due to our increased efforts to spot problematic content, more precise moderation policies, and better reporting tools, we have seen a 47% increase in the number of accounts locked or suspended for violating Twitter rules," specifies the platform.

Multiplication of coordinated reporting campaigns

But the increase in these suspensions is also explained by the increase in the number of reports.

It happens that users intervene en masse to report content and obtain its removal.

In this case, it is possible that the moderation algorithms are deceived by the mass of reports and suspend an account, whether or not the latter violates the rules of use of Twitter.

This is called a coordinated campaign, or a raid.

Stéphanie Lamy, paid the price in August.

“I suffered a first raid after a tweet about the fire at Nantes Cathedral, which was posted in an article in

.

I was then reported en masse by the fascosphere, ”explains the feminist activist, whose account was temporarily suspended.

But the coup de grace came a few days later.

“I commented on statistics regarding police suicides.

And I was targeted by the community of law enforcement and their supporters on Twitter, who did not like me to question the methodology of their count, ”says Stéphanie Lamy.

I have identified the origin of the mass report on my account.

These are the FdOs and their supporters on twitter who did not like me to question the methodology of their "suicide" count on which the advocacy of the FdO women's association is based. Https://t.co/ 6jwCtYy8Ko pic.twitter.com/ouxThnCiwH

- Stephanie Lamy (@Boadiceenne) August 19, 2020

Reported en masse, his account was officially deleted, despite several complaints sent to Twitter France.

"We have the impression that raids to silence people who disturb people are increasingly organized today, that people are even more virulent than before," explains Stéphanie Lamy.

Twitter recognizes that this phenomenon of “mass reporting” is common.

But the social network still refuses to communicate on its algorithms and on the reporting threshold beyond which an account can be automatically suspended.

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