This blog post about how I restored my account when I saw the message ‘Twitter Account Suspended’.
Please note: The suspension was my own fault and I’m lucky and grateful that Twitter lifted the suspension.
Warning: I’m only informing you about how my account was restored. If you’re looking for help with an account problem, please don’t expect the same result or hold me responsible for any issues that result from reading this blog post.
Introduction
I had automated a Twitter account with a couple of services to tweet blog posts and retweet a hashtag, to help reduce administration, but I think it ended up looking like spam (but of other people’s content).
For a while I was still manually using the account, but slowed down my involvement and then walked away for many months.
When I checked the account, I noticed it had been suspended, likely for at least three months. This wasn’t the first time I had run into trouble, but verifying an email address or phone number wasn’t going to resolve the problem for me this time.
Fortunately Twitter has a page that enables you to appeal an account suspension or locked account. Below I will go into detail of the actions I took that resulted in Twitter kindly lifting the suspension.
Step 1 – I read the best practices page and automation rules
I read the following pages:
• https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules-and-best-practices
• https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-automation
• https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
Step 2 – I disabled the automation
I logged into an automated service that I accessed via an email address (rather than Twitter directly) and disabled the automated tweets.
Step 3 – I appealed to Twitter
Using a desktop computer I visited the page https://help.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended
This isn’t the exact wording, but I wrote something similar (and meant it):
My Twitter account is suspended. I stupidly was using an automated service and took a break from Twitter. I have read the best practices page and will not use (mentioned a service) again or other services to automate. I apologise. Please enable my Twitter account.
Again, above is not the exact wording, but I wrote something similar. I didn’t supply a phone number on that page.
Step 4 – Twitter kindly unsuspended my accounts
Within thirty minutes Twitter had taken action and emailed me. They didn’t have to be generous and I’m fortunate they helped me.
Step 5- I revoked access via Twitter
I logged into the Twitter account and then revoked access to services I had used to automate my account.
Other information
My following and followers numbers and lists didn’t appear for a while, but when I checked back later that day they were present.
Conclusion
This was a problem of my own creation and Twitter acted in a kind and quick manner to allow me to use the account again.