Astronomer says video of meteor on Twitter was mistaken for PORN

Astronomer claims she has been locked out of her Twitter account since August after her video of a meteor was mistaken for PORN by social media site’s moderation bots

• Six-second clip of a meteor shower flagged as ‘explicit content’ by moderators 
• Ms McIntyre said she can only get back on Twitter if she accepts she broke rules
• Conservationist also temporarily suspended for tweet about pink-footed geese 
• Comes amid Elon Musk takeover which saw mass layoffs and shake-up of Twitter

An astronomer claims she had been locked out of her Twitter account since August  after her video of a meteor shower was mistaken for explicit content by the social media giant’s moderation bots.

Mary McIntyre, from Oxfordshire, made a six-second animated video clip of the Perseid meteor shower back four months ago but was locked out after it was flagged to have broken rules for containing ‘intimate content without the consent of the participant’.

Ms McIntyre said she will only be allowed back onto the platform if she deletes the tweet and ticks a box to acknowledge that she broke rules, which she disputes.

Mary McIntyre, from Oxfordshire, made a six-second animated video clip of the Perseid meteor shower back in August

She told R4’s Today Programme that she will only be allowed back onto the platform if she deletes the tweet and ticks a box to acknowledge that she broke rules, which she said she did not.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, she said: ‘It’s just crazy. I get a DBS check every year because I do a lot of work with school children and brownies and scouts,

‘I don’t really want it on my record that I have been sharing pornographic material when I haven’t’.

She continued: ‘I must have gone through the appeals process as many times as I can. 

‘We found an online contact form on the help page, I must have contacted them eight times now, and I just get nothing.’

Ms McIntyre’s is just one example of innocuous tweets that have been flagged as violating Twitter’s rules amid a turbulent time for the social media platform following tech mogul Elon Musk’s takeover.

Mass layoffs in a bid to drive profits has resulted in wiping out the teams that battle misinformation as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.

Twitter fired its contractors that track hate and other harmful content on Saturday, and some said they were unaware they had been fired until they were not able to log on to their work systems.  

Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on November 4. 

Nick Acheson, who uses Twitter with the moniker @themarshtit, said he ‘almost exclusively’ tweets about nature

Mr Acheson said he was suspended from Twitter after sending a tweet about ‘pink-footed geese’

Meanwhile, a conservationist has been slapped on the wrist for tweeting about about pink-footed geese as they flew over his house earlier this week.

Nick Acheson, who uses Twitter with the moniker @themarshtit, said he ‘almost exclusively’ tweets about nature and was surprised to find his account had been suspended for ‘violating’ the platform’s rules.

On Monday morning, Mr Acheson said that he noticed ‘the pink-footed geese that visit us from Iceland in the winter flew over my house’.

Calling geese ‘my thing’ with a book coming out on the subject next year, Mr Acheson was excited to capture the nature event and tweeted ‘when pinks fly over our house shrieking in the mist’.

However, he noticed that almost ‘instantly’ he received a notification from Twitter asking him to delete the tweet for ‘violating one of our rules’.

SImilarly to Ms McIntyre, he was told that by deleting the tweet he acknowledged that he had violated the rules.

He told the Today programme: ‘So I went to look at the rules, and the Twitter rules are really quite sinister. 

‘They are full of things about inciting violence and hate speech and I can in no way square my rather innoucous tweet with having violated any of those rules.

‘I have not had a specific violation pointed out to me so I am extremely reluctant to delete my tweet, thereby acknowledging that I have violated rules.’

Mr Acheson’s account was suspended but has since been reinstated following the debacle. 

Twitter has been contacted for a comment.  

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