An astronomer claims his account has been blocked since August, after the meteor shower video he shared was flagged as pornographic by Twitter moderation bots.
Mary McIntyre of Oxfordshire shot a six-second animated video clip of the Perseid meteor shower four months ago and shared it on Twitter. But whatever happened happened after that; Twitter decided that the post was pornographic and closed the account.
McIntyre says that although he made the necessary objections, he could not get results. He adds that he was told he could only return to the platform if he deleted the tweet and ticked a box to admit he broke the rules.
The tweet and photo in question.Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, McIntyre said: “This is crazy. I often get a DBS check every year because I work with students, cupcakes and scouts. I really don’t want my posting on my record if I don’t post pornographic material. I must have gone through the appeal process as many times as I can. On the help page. We found an online contact form, I’ve contacted them I think eight times and I’m not getting any results.”
It also seems interesting that Ms. McIntyre’s situation emerged during a turbulent time after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Because Musk also dismissed external moderators as part of the mass layoffs made in order to increase the profit rate. This brings to mind the suspicion that the moderation system, which does not seem to be working well anyway, may get worse.
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