Twitter Bans Retiree, Allows Porn
Press release August 11, 2009 ITBusiness Consultant Asks Why Twitter Labels Him a Spammer While Pornographers and Escorts Go Wild
Annapolis,MD, August 11, 2009--Twitter on Monday suspended accounts of Leo J. Vidal, JD, MA, CPA, a retired business consultant, for posting the same message to more than one account, labeling the posts as "spam." According to Mr. Vidal, who is writing a book on Twitter for businesses, the service allows pornographers, escorts and real spammers to operate at will.
"I've been doing extensive Twitter research for my book," said Vidal, "and I've seen thousands of real spammers operate without restraint on Twitter. And a lot of their material is pornographic. You see everything from escort ads to global porn sites, including gay S&M and torture video advertisements. Some tweets are accompanied by photographs that would turn your stomach."
Mr. Vidal's tweet which got him in trouble read "This IS great: The greatest marketing idea of all time in a free book at http://bit.ly/UPzXQ (no email required)." He posted it to several accounts shortly after midnight on Sunday. ‘It’s an excellent free book that I thought people would be interested in,” he said.
Mr. Vidal's Twitter use had been limited last weekend after the service was interrupted due to a global "denial of service" attack. He says he decided to post the message to more than one account because he hadn’t been able to post any messages for two days. Vidal says he was shocked when Twitter contacted him on Monday saying they were shutting his accounts down, labeling him a “spammer” because of just one message.
According to Vidal, the Twitter Terms of Service give them complete discretion as to who they allow to operate, so they must know that they are allowing pornographers, prostitutes and spammers to run wild on their service.
"There's no rhyme or reason to it," he said. "They say they don't allow accounts with more than 2,000 people, yet they allow some spammers to have accounts with tens or hundreds of thousands of followed people. And celebrities like Ashton Kutcher have millions."
Vidal said he would appeal Twitter’s suspension of his accounts using their internal procedures.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. The Twitter Terms of Service state: "You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes 'spamming' will evolve." They list fourteen possible categories of spam.
Maryland Internet Marketing helps small and medium sized businesses develop and put in place internet marketing strategies to generate more sales and profits at reduced cost.
CONTACT: Leo J. Vidal, JD, MA, CPA, President, Maryland Internet Marketing, 1-800-535-4072
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