‘Intimate media’? Night sky video gets astronomer banned from Twitter for months
An astronomer in the U.K. excitedly shared a night sky video on Twitter — only to be flagged for sharing inappropriate content and temporarily banned.
Mary McIntyre stayed up the night of the Perseids meteor shower to watch the event, the Oxfordshire-based astronomer said in an Aug. 12 Tweet. The next day, she shared a video of some of the fireballs.
“Visually it was epic,” she wrote in the Tweet, sharing an 24-second video that showed the trails of light illuminating the night sky.
Twitter flagged the video as “intimate media” and blocked her account for sharing it, McIntyre said on Thursday, Nov. 17 in her first Tweet back.
Twitter’s “sensitive media policy” prevents users from posting media that is “excessively gory,” “violent or adult content,” according to Twitter’s Help Center.
Why was the video flagged as inappropriate? “I have absolutely no idea,” McIntyre replied in a Twitter thread.
Twitter does not have a communications department so McClatchy News reached out to the @TwitterComms account who did not respond.
“After my initial 12 hour ban was over I filled in the appeals form but didn’t hear anything at all,” McIntyre told McClatchy News on Nov. 17. “Over the past three months I continued to contact them about 10 to 15 times... but I wasn’t able to get a response from anybody at Twitter, and neither did any of the people who tagged Twitter support on my behalf.”
Twitter never explained or messaged her, McIntyre said. “My account just magically appeared again.” She regained access to her account a few hours after the BBC published an article about her plight.
Until then, McIntyre had been blocked from Twitter unless she deleted the offending tweet, BBC reported. She refused to do this saying, “It’s just crazy... I don’t really want it on my record that I’ve been sharing pornographic material when I haven’t.”
“I wasn’t able to get my account back unless I admitted to breaking the rule,” McIntyre explained. “It’s really frustrating that they make you admit to something you didn’t do… I wasn’t comfortable admitting to that particular rule when I do astronomy outreach with children.”
“It was probably just an over-zealous AI,” McIntyre said in another tweet, “but it’s taken three months get a human to look at to see how stupid it was.”
McIntyre said it was “a frustrating three months” and that she’s “scared” to retweet the original video “just in case I get blocked again.” Since getting her account back, she has been quickly tweeting and replying, but remains “very reluctant to share anything meteor related!”
“The Twitter astronomy community has been absolutely wonderful today,” McIntyre said, “and it’s lovely to be able to get back to promoting astronomy there again.”
Oxfordshire is about 55 miles northwest of London.
This story was originally published November 17, 2022 at 1:00 PM with the headline "‘Intimate media’? Night sky video gets astronomer banned from Twitter for months."
