For the last week or so I’ve been publishing comparisons between two microphones, today I posted the third in the series which resulted in this notification and accompanying email:
My account is locked, I can’t even view content on X until I either agree to remove this post or someone reviews it and decided it is indeed, innocuous.
Note the blank “specifically for:” section of the email. X can’t tell me why this post resulted in my account being locked, or why a less strident action wasn’t imposed such as issuing a warning, limited the post’s reach, or hiding the content. X jumped straight to locking my account which as I understand it, is only one step down from closing it altogether.
Have a read of the post’s text above and listen to the audio, I’d be interested in others’ guesses as to what might have triggered such a reaction. I’m also interested in whether my account itself is actually visible right now - @SimonRAnderson.
I have of course disputed this action, declined to take down the post and requested a review -goodness knows how long such a review will take. In the meantime I’m denied access to a service I pay for.
And it’s not without impact. My weekly SimonTV LIVE episode is scheduled for 8.30pm tomorrow evening. If I’m still locked out of my account it won’t be going out on the X platform but will be to many of X’s competitors: Youtube, Rumble, Twitch, Instagram and Telegram.
X has a growing number of deficiencies as a social media platform. No platform is perfect and X has been pretty good since Musk took over management. But for smaller creators such as myself, incidents like this serve as a reminder that it is best to avoid having all your eggs in one basket, and worth cultivating audience on other platforms. Mr. Musk might consider the historical consequences to the likes of MySpace and Facebook, of smaller creators and our audiences migrating to more accommodating platforms.
And working towards it, by using his platform as a signpost, publishing links to our content rather than our content itself, in an effort to encourage our audiences towards greener pastures.
-SRA. Auckland, 25/i 2025.
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