I think its important for Twitter users to understand that their accounts can be suspended for weeks or more without reason or explanation.

I've been using Twitter since 2008. I have over 400 followers and nearly 600 posts. Over the years I've started to rely on Twitter as a way to communicate with other people.

On November 23rd, Twitter suspended my account. I logged in and was informed of this by a banner across the top of the site. Today, December 6th, my account was reactivated.

No explanation for this has ever been provided to me. Twitter's documentation claims that if you've been suspended you'll have received an email explaining why. I never received any such email. I appealed, and the appeal produced a rather paternalist automated response:

If you didn't receive an email indicating why your account was suspended, please take a minute to review the Twitter Rules. If you suspect you've been suspended for another reason, please reply to this email with a short explanation.

I did respond to this message, and explained that I had no idea why my account had been suspended, and no one responded to that appeal.

A week later I filed a second appeal.

A week after that, my account was reactivated, in response to my second appeal. No specific explanation was provided, but, again, there is a strong implication that I must have broken some rule:

misspenny_lane, Dec-06 11:17 am (PST):

Hello,

It looks like this issue has been resolved. You may wish to review the Twitter Rules, located at twitter.com/rules.

Thanks,

misspenny_lane

I suspect that Twitter's processes may be broken enough that they do not understand or cannot explain why they chose to disable my account.

In Googling around I have found similar stories of Twitter users whose accounts have been suddenly deactivated without explanation. Some are recovered after a month, or never.

I certainly have a more sour view of Twitter after this experience.