I canât yet reveal why, but Iâve come across the work of Hong Kong-trained and based designer Caroline Li, and itâs really good. Sheâs done a lot of book covers, and I know first-hand how hard it is to have a small canvas to work from. Maybe Iâm just used to magazines. Check out her work here.
After nearly two months, Lucireâs Twitter account has been restored.
Earlier in the week, they had requestedâagainâthat I upload my ID to prove that I was who I said I was, despite this having been done countless times already in the past two months.
Today, I received another âit appears that this issue may have been resolved.â I had my doubts and was about to send them a reply giving them a piece of my mind, but I checked, and sure enough, Lucireâs account was back.
I donât know if my letter to Twitter New Zealand Ltd.âs directors, via their lawyers, did the trick, or whether my private information finally reached someone literate with reasonable intelligence.
I gave the lawyers till today (the 17th) to respond, though the timing of the resolution could be a coincidence.
It showed just how terrible Twitterâs systems have been and how right I was to call the entire process farcical. To think that Facebook did better when Lucireâs Instagram was deactivated, and we were only out for a week. And I have had plenty to say about Facebook over the years, as you all know.
Itâs a shame that we never got to play with Zoho Socialâs premium version trial with all our social media accounts intact. I just hope that now that weâve reactivated all our gadgets (IFTTT, Dlvr.it, etc.), that they work as they once did. (As they certainly didnât when we used our temporary @luciremagazine account on Twitter.)
When I was waiting for my new phone to arrive, I didn’t know what all the DHL status updates meant. I looked online to see if I could get a clue as to how long each stage took, especially the “last mile” delivery. There were very few screenshots or public traces. Here’s the trace from my package in case it helps someone else the same boat. (Vivaldi put the DHL website header near the bottom when I made the screenshot.)
After reviewing the reported account, it appears that this issue may have been resolved. Please reply to this email if you still need assistance, or to let us know if the situation has changed in any way.
You just have to wonder if they hire morons at that level, or do they hire regular people and train them down?
Dear Twitter Support:
This most certainly has not been resolved. Quite the opposite.
Your company still refuses to examine the evidence, despite our sending it numerous times.
We have heard nothing from you at all over the actions you say you will take. In fact, your latest response of pretending all is well is the only thing we have heard from Twitter since the 4th [ult.]
It has been referred to your internal support team by your UK head of planning, David Wilding (whom I know) to no avail.
I’m not sure that you could call it resolved as a quick check of the handle shows it ‘doesn’t exist’.
We ask again that @Lucire be unlocked as we have done nothing wrong, and we hold a USPTO trade mark registration for all online publishing usage. (Your own link in your autoresponse to locked accounts results in a 404.)
We have to come to your department as the “proper channels” for locked accounts claim that I cannot be confirmed as the owner of Lucire, and a USPTO certificate is apparently not the sort of evidence they will entertain.
Attached is a letter to your executives Winston Foo and John Pegg outlining the whole matter to date. It would be fair to label your responses farcical ⊠I have also attached the same items of evidence that have been sent earlier. They more than satisfy your requirements.
I should note that Instagram took a week to resolve an accidental deactivation caused by its AI, not a month and a half. This entire matter can sensibly be resolved in minutes, not months.
We put the ball back in your court.
Agreed. They claim I let someone into my Associates' account as their reason for not paying my earnings. It's utter BS and they can't tell me who this mystery person is. Maybe their computers are this insecure?!
Yes they are. I explained I had unique passwords, additional security software, no one had access to my computer etc but their line is âitâs not us itâs youâ. The ICO upheld my complaint. @amazon would not accept responsibility. https://t.co/WnbHuWiASE
Itâs clearly a policy. Cheap products were bought from my account at exorbitant prices and sent to me. They tried to say first Iâd committed fraud. When I invoiced the ICO they said I had breached my data. When I explained why it wasnât possible they started sending me money.
You read correctly: Amazon is just as dodgy as the others I’ve criticized publicly. Just that I hadn’t got around to them on this blog, because there had been a lengthy dialogue and I wanted to get more facts. But above is where I’ve got to so far, and it seems I’m not alone.
Amazing what sort of press releases come in. I had no idea that Auckland is our capital, and I was surprised to find that Toronto and Antwerp are as well in the same release.
Essential Living is a British firm, from the looks of it, and no, we won’t be publishing this in Lucire.
You’d think the PR firm might check as well, but maybe post-Brexit they don’t really care about other countries any more?
Meanwhile, on Twitter. It’s getting nutty toward the end of the year. Just today we saw a motorcyclist come off his Suzuki in Johnsonville, and a Toyota van almost losing control altogether in Tawa. ‘Driving to the conditions’ doesn’t seem to be a thing any more. On Friday, it was this:
Have the rules for traffic lights changed? I stopped on a red at Karo Drive, Mercedes in the next lane went right through, truck driver behind me was beeping like crazy wanting me to go. Clearly Iâm in the minority believing that red means stop.
The truck driver overtakes me, then stops on a red. So I beeped him, because I figured that red now means go. And he gets really upset, starts backing his Park Contractors Ltd. of Wainuiomata truck into me (he doesnât hit). The snowflake canât handle what he dished out.
Could Park Contractors Ltd. of Wainuiomata please send me the updated traffic light rules? It seems red sometimes means go but it also sometimes means stop and as an immigrant I do not know how the locals distinguish between the two types of red.
Itâs hard to believe, but Twitter is far, far worse than Facebook when it comes to straightening things out.
Theyâve now asked for my âgovernment-issued IDâ thrice and Iâve provided it thrice. It meets all their criteria.
This is the latest bollocks:
Hello,
Weâre writing to let you know that weâre unable to verify you as the account owner. We know this is disappointing to hear, but we canât assist you further with accessing your account.
If you know which email address is associated with the account, and you no longer have access to that email, please contact your email provider for assistance.
For privacy reasons, we canât provide any information about this accountâs email address.
Youâre more than welcome to create a new account to get back onto Twitter.
Please do not respond to this email as replies to this account are not monitored.
Thanks,
Twitter
I didnât need to be verified as the account owner. I need the account to be unlocked and you needed me to prove my age. I’ve done that. And I know which email is used, I set it up.
So thatâs 12-plus years and thousands of followers gone?
I really had expected Facebook to screw up somewhere and weâd lose our accounts there, but not Twitter.
Iâve now gone to their IP department and lodged a complaint against myself (as the owner of the @lucire handle) to see if it can be assigned to me. Convoluted? You bet.
And instead of sending them my ID again (I’ve tried passport and driver’s licence), I’m going to send in my USPTO registration. What’s the bet they won’t accept something issued by their own government?
PS.: Maybe their ad department is smarter. Let’s see if they respond to this.
Hi folks:
This is very unorthodox but in practice, the ad department tends to be the best at troubleshooting.
Last month, our business account @lucire was locked. Now, before you refer me to the locked account people, this is the only one where Iâm likely to do any advertising from. We were locked for being honest. Twitter asked us to fill in the date of birth, and that it applied even to businesses. At no point did it ask for my DOB, but the companyâs.
That was October 20, 1997.
The AI came crashing down on us. Turns out that made us underage when the account was opened. Now, Iâm 49, so I know I wasnât underage.
I went through the process of sending in ID, which met all your criteria.
Now theyâre saying that they canât verify me as the owner, which wasnât even the issue to begin with.
Iâve sent in driverâs licence, passport, even a USPTO trade mark certificate (surely thatâll show Iâm the owner?).
Hereâs an account that dates back to the 2000s with thousands of followers that weâd like reinstated.
Weâd really like you to help, as the locked-account process is going around in circles, and we are making no progress. On Facebook, it was the ad âconciergesâ who sorted us out, and I wonder if Twitter will be just as effective.
Thank you for your report. Your request is still pending, and in an earlier response, weâd requested more information that we need to continue the review.
If you still need assistance, reply to this email with those details. If the issue has already been resolved, please disregard this message.
If we donât receive a response in a few days, this request will be closed. If that happens, or if you need support for anything else, you can always submit a new report.
Thanks,
Twitter
There was no earlier response, and there’s nothing in the trash (at server level). It’s pretty typical: the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing.
Since there’s no ticket system you can use to follow up with (despite a case number being assigned), all you can do on the Twitter site itself once you log back in to the locked account is to resubmit the evidence and begin at step one.
Twitter has taken longer than Facebook nowâand to think how often I (justifiably) slam Facebook on this blog.
I can’t imagine what ‘details’ they still need. What’s the bet that a driver’s licence doesn’t qualify as a government-issued ID in the US?
One good thing to having Twitter lock Lucireâs account: there’s no point having a Twitter gadget or widget on your home page any more. Was there ever one to begin with? I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a site and found a Twitter widget useful.
It did bother me that a Lucire print cover was no longer visible on the top part of the screen with the new theme. The ‘Our latest issue’ has now been moved to the sidebar from the bottom of the page, where it used to reside next to âLucire on Twitter’. It doesn’t make much difference to cellphone users, but all the difference to web ones.
So that’s one positive development to being locked out of Twitter.
I’ve also made a minor tweak to this blog: the left-hand column is now wider, and a few more logos appear. Previously the table width (yes, it’s that old) was 960 pixels, but I figured that most people would have larger monitors by now. The blog also has a working, albeit standard, Wordpress mobile theme, so unlike Lucire there shouldn’t be any problems for cellphone users if I changed things. It does make this blog slightly inconsistent with the rest of the site, but maybe one day I’ll stick the lot on Bootstrap as well.
PS.: The first widget to disappear was Facebook’s, in 2018, weeks before the Cambridge Analytica story. Instagram’s was taken off when we most recently reskinned the home page a few weeks ago. They’re all pointing us in this direction.
