Yesterday, the account of teen conservative turned Bernie Sander supporter turned Donald Trump supporter C.J. Pearson was locked by Twitter after it determined that Pearson was only 13 years old and therefore violating the company’s terms of service. Pearson, who signed up for Twitter when he was 13, is now 15, however, so this confused everyone:
.@Twitter has deleted 15 year old black Conservative @thecjpearson account because they said he was under 13.
He is in fact 15. He was verified which means Twitter knew this.@jack please do the honorable thing and restore his account.
CC @tedcruz @parscale pic.twitter.com/UbaZL0E4Cy
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) June 12, 2018
Twitter eventually realized it’s error:
It’s good to be back.
— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) June 12, 2018
And explained what went wrong in a series of tweets last night:
There have been questions and concerns about accounts being locked because of age restrictions. We wanted to let you know what happened here, and what we’re doing about it. 1/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
We recently made product changes tied to new privacy laws (GDPR) and became aware of accounts that were set up by people when they were younger than 13. We didn’t expect this. 2/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
These accounts were automatically locked, and we created additional confusion by sending messages to people saying that they’re still under 13 (when many are now older) and need to close their accounts. 3/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
Our rules don’t allow anyone under 13 to Tweet or create a Twitter account so we’re working on a technical solution to delete those Tweets, and allow the impacted account holders to continue on Twitter. 4/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
In the meantime, we’re reaching out to people impacted with options to unlock their account and continue to use Twitter. Instructions from us will come during the coming week. 5/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
We apologize for the confusion and the inconvenience, and will continue to work to serve you better. 6/6
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 12, 2018
But in the process of getting rid of Pearson’s underage tweets, they’ve also nuked his follower count:
Since the restoration of my account, I’ve lost almost virtually all my followers. If you don’t mind, can you RT this and help me regain them?
— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) June 13, 2018
Faster, Twitter. Fix. This.
***
Related:
Talk about SCHOOLED! CJ Pearson drops BRUTAL history lesson on John Legend for insisting the parties 'switched' https://t.co/871WpdDvzF
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) May 1, 2018
'Profile in courage': C.J. Pearson learns tough lesson after tangling with Jonah Goldberg https://t.co/frmdfTNDA9
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) March 26, 2018
KA-CHOW! High school Sophomore CJ Pearson drops a TRUTH BOMB about the gun control movement https://t.co/DGJeBiYTak
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) March 24, 2018
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