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In the space of less than a month, another US social network has shut Lucire’s account down. This time it’s Twitter.
When going through the settings to see if Lucire could be verified, Twitter requested that we complete all the information. It specifically states that the date of birth should be entered, even for companies.
It only seemed logical to put in Lucire’s founding date, October 20, 1997.
That was enough to have the account locked. As we started the account in the 2000s, it stated we were under age when that happened.
We’re not sure why an event in the 2000s would have an impact in the 2020s, but more importantly, Twitter should have worded its request far better.
As a company account, any number of people could be managing it. It so happened that I set up the account, so I provided them with my driver’s licence as proof of my age—but that’s not the age of the company. What if I had assigned a social media manager in their early 20s to do the job? Isn’t it conceivable that they would then inadvertently lock the account if they put in their own date of birth?
Not even Facebook or Instagram are daft enough to lock an account based on a company’s foundation date. What other date would a reasonable person have put down when the company’s birthday is requested? The date of first operation? The date the idea was conceived? The date of incorporation? All of those would have fallen foul of Twitter’s systems.
For a company that made US$3·7 milliard in revenue last year, it does seem a rather major error.
After I noted this on my personal account, spammers and bots began replying—accounts that no doubt have been reported but are permitted to remain.
We remain in the dark on why Instagram deactivated our account less than a month ago.
It is perhaps best to either lie to these US social media giants (in the case of some, it’s the behaviour their own leadership exhibits), or to not provide them information at all. Or, better yet, to not rely on them at all and to focus on one’s own proprietary web presences. It is no coincidence that with our redesign, we left off all social media links, ironically with the exception of Twitter on our home page.—Jack Yan, Founder and Publisher
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