Twitter suspended the accounts of 9to5Mac and XDA Developers on Thursday for not meeting the minimum age requirement. The suspension took effect after the publisher changed the date of birth in their account. It was lifted for XDA Developers accounts a few hours after the restriction, although 9to5Mac’s account has not been fully restored at the time of this writing. Interestingly, both accounts are verified by Twitter and carry the iconic Blue badge to set them apart from the masses on the platform. The 9to5Mac account is also part of the Twitter Blue Publishers network that was introduced last year for US-based publishers to deliver ad-free articles to Twitter users and support monetization. from online publishers.
Seth Weintraub, publisher of 9to5Mac, has Twitter use his personal account to report suspended. He shared a screenshot showing a message that reads: “To create a Twitter account, you must be 13 years of age or older. Twitter has determined that you do not meet these age requirements. , so your account has been locked and will be removed from Twitter.”
The company also requires the issuer to report directly in case the account is locked due to an error.
Weintraub told Gadgets 360 that he has tried multiple ways to complain about the issue, but the account has not been fully restored. “There is pedestrian logic in their door locking mechanism,” he said. “But then there’s also no error for Verified Publishers or Twitter Blue.”
The account in question was beginning to show some signs of recovery at the time of publication of the article.
The incident took place when promoted 9to5Mac social media director Arin Waichulis entered his date of birth to conduct Ticket Spaces – paid audio chats – on the platform.
Weintraub told Gadgets 360: “Arin updated his account’s date of birth because Twitter will likely ask for proof of ID.”
However, that move resulted in the account being locked out because he was under 13 when the original 9to5Mac account was created about 14 years ago – in August 2008.
According to Twitter’s age requirements, everyone on the platform must be 13 or older. It also require users delete their previous data if they signed up for an account before the age of 13. Anyhow, the company doesn’t have any specific policies regarding age requirements for organizations.
Account limits were also introduced for XDA Developers, as reported by Editor-in-Chief Aamir Siddiqui on Twitter. However, the XDA Developers account come back a few hours after it was locked.
Gadgets 360 has reached out to Twitter for comment on the matter and will update this article when the company responds.
It’s important to point out that the issue of deleting organizational accounts for not meeting the age requirements is not new to Twitter. It went into some report in 2018. The company also faces some indignant on the Web to permanently lock users out of their accounts if they created them under the age of 13.
Back then, Twitter was also admit the problem and apologizes to the affected users. However, the issue seems to persist and is affecting a number of publishers – not just individual users.
