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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

Just a small anecdote: I created a company account, then set the birthday to ~1 year ago, when the company was registered. Everything was fine for 5 minutes, then my account has been blocked with a notification telling me that I need to be at least 13 years old to use Twitter. I can still login but cannot access the settings to change the birthday (or just remove it) as a screen “fix your age or prove your identity” is blocking me from doing anything. I used their support form to send a proof of ID a few times but the account gets blocked again every time.

Somehow twitter believes that 1 years old are trying to join their platform. That was more than 6 months ago, and still no solution ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Most hilarious one related to the 13yo boobytrap was that they lock you out if your date of registration predates your 13th birthday, regardless of how long ago it was.

Like, if you were younger than 13 at some point, and you didn’t prove yourself that you’re no longer 13, it can’t be ruled out that you potentially haven’t aged since, by Twitter logic.

Seen through survivorship bias it’s obvious that you may never set DoB for any of your accounts, but ... I guess Twitter is kind of weird one from what SNS is generally understood to be.

> Like, if you were younger than 13 at some point, and you didn’t prove yourself that you’re no longer 13, it can’t be ruled out that you potentially haven’t aged since, by Twitter logic.

No, that’s due to the fact that they don’t want to store any data about yourself from when you were under 13 years old. I had this happen to me when I changed my account age and it said it had to delete all tweets (amongst other info) from when I was <13 and my profile was wiped (bio, profile pic, website link), likely because they don’t timestamp profile changes in their DB (some audit log probably has it though).

https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/account-re...

What shocks me is there is no warning that setting a date of birth is a dangerous action.

The company is just hostile to its users.

This likely has nothing to do with hostility and everything to do with regulation, specifically COPPA:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/com...

>7. I have a “mixed audience” app and would like to age screen my users. Are there specific requirements for the age screen?

>An example of a neutral age screen would be a system that allows a user freely to enter the month and year of birth. Avoid encouraging children to falsify age information by, for example, stating that certain features will not be available to users under age 13.

I lost my Discord account for daring to use the "change your e-mail address" feature. Nothing warned me that this was a potentially-destructive action. It happens.

A year or two ago I went through every online account I have to change the email address.

I should have kept a record of results. Some were good and easy. Some had no option other than an account closure. Some involved a single contact of support without any real verification that I was actually the account holder. Some involved a protracted string of contact with support that tried to claim I was asking for an impossibility. Some services kept my old email on file and I periodically receive something to my old address.

I had way too many successful email changes that did not send an email to my old email account informing me of the action. If a hacker had stolen those accounts, I might not know for a long time!

Similar story: I finally created an account last week and after a few minutes of looking around, I tried to follow 1 person and got locked out. It requires a phone number to the unlock the account now. Just feels like gratuitous extortion of personal data. Also, seriously asking: Why does it even let you create an account with email if it will force you to give a phone number anyway?

Yeah, this phone number lock is really annoying. Depending on the state of the account you may have a link on the desktop version to bypass adding a phone number.

I created a regular account. I followed a handful of people. Not long after (same day I think) it said they thought I was a bot and could I scan my ID and email it to them to verify I was a human.

I couldn't even log into the account to delete it without providing them a photo of my ID, so I said fuck that and never thought about it ever again.

The funny part is, your account was probably recorded as a "bot" account in that team's success metrics.

honestly I'm happy it worked out that way, given how cancerous twitter has become. They blocked me and it was better for me overall.

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