A Twitter Glitch Gets Multiple Accounts Banned For Stray Gameplay
Twitter’s algorithm decided that the video of the cat falling through the air was intimate imagery posted without consent. This rule is often used to ban revenge porn. As the stubborn me that I am, I decided to fight the decision and continue sending appeals to Twitter asking for explanations on how the clip broke those rules. Twitter will automatically ban people until they remove the content I posted if they can prove that it was not breaking any rules. It is impossible to appeal and delete the tweet that was offending simultaneously. This makes sense to some people.
I discovered that I wasn’t the only one in Twitter jail for cat crime while in my exile. Many others replied to my previous article, claiming they were banned for the same thing. Most of them cited the glitch or another similar one elsewhere in the game. All of these were uploaded directly to the PlayStation 5’s sharing tools. Annapurna Interactive even got involved in this effort to obtain information from Twitter about the causes.
It was evident that this incident was not isolated after speaking with Twitter employees and trying unsuccessfully to get official comments from Twitter. Clips of Stray were found to be triggering a false positive in Twitter’s algorithm for revenge porn and resulted in automatic bans.
Twitter doesn’t want to answer my questions about how this happened. It isn’t very comfortable to admit this, and it likely reveals more about the AI-based moderation tools than they would like to know. Although Twitter employees told me the problem was fixed, they refused to dig further. Twitter, as a company, has declined to comment.
It appears that it is more than Stray. Further investigation revealed that other game footage could trigger automatic bans, including DNF Duel and Rollerdrome. Twitter did not comment on any of this.
It’s comforting to hear that this was fixed. However, it’s impossible to know how much. This raises important questions about Twitter’s AI-based moderation tools. While they largely fail to pick up harassment and slurs, they can misclassify videos at a moment’s notice. It is unclear if the bans can be fixed permanently, as multiple games appear to trigger them. What is the commonality between Stray and DNFDuelshare? This would prevent Wolong: Fallen Dynasty people from being banned.
