mcmastersteve on Nostr: This is why decentralized social media Nostr is the future for journalists. Take ...

This is why decentralized social media Nostr is the future for journalists. Take control of your investigations and join.

Mike Benz is a former official with the U.S. Department of State and current Executive Director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, a free speech watchdog organisation dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet. Once a staunch advocate for the X platform, he now denounces its no-warning, ruthless and opaque practices of de-platforming.
I got no information about why my X account was nuked, and it remains a mystery to others who have publicly attested to my ever courteous behaviour on the platform, and the public interest in keeping my 15-year X archive as a filmmaker and journalist online. I did a lot of courtroom reporting and nine years of writing about WikiLeaks before I joined Consortium News. It has all been erased from the historical record.
You’re made to guess why you’ve been nuked, by reading the X Rules and picking one out - but it started with me being asked to prove I was human, followed by X saying there was a “technical issue” with returning me to my account. They invited me to try again, but then came messaging to other users about unusual activity on my account, advising them to proceed with caution.
For two weeks I sent multiple forms of ID, bank statements and invoices for my Premium account to X, in order to prove I was not only human but me. I tried to contact tech support but there is only a portal for appealing locked or suspended accounts, and it only issues automated responses. I got nowhere and I couldn’t access my account during this period to download the archive.
Much to my surprise, the lockout ended with permanent suspension for [allegedly] breaking [unspecified] X Rules. I was then permitted to log in again, after two more tests to prove I was human. They had made my account invisible to the world, and only partially visible to me. All but my profile photo, of 2296 images and videos uploaded over 15 years, are greyed out and I can’t get an answer on whether X has permanently deleted the media, or if it could be restored. I have been stripped of subscribers and followers. I can’t like, repost or follow, and I can’t read or write messages.
They call it “read-only” mode and it’s like solitary confinement, but where all trace of everything you did - for 15 years before breaking any X rule - is obliterated.
I didn’t lose my Premium account. X continues to bill me for it every month and I’m reluctant to stop that if there’s a chance I can recover my media, especially the videos that exceed the duration for a free account. X is not enabling me to download my archive, even though suspended account owners are supposed to be able to do that. It just keeps saying, as it did before with the technical issue, “Oops, something went wrong”.
I don’t know if something did go wrong, as X was claiming, or I did something wrong, but it’s a hell of a punishment that has harmed me, both personally and professionally, as well as removing a slice of history that others can no longer find.

https://www.facebook.com/cathy.vogan/videos/1154750925862840/