Twitter user @theb00kwitch said yesterday that her account had been temporarily locked.
She told BuzzFeed News that she had been tweeting about the movie Love, Simon and said that one of the tweets had led to her account being temporarily limited.
She said, "Someone responded saying they don’t like that the author of the book the movie was based off of is a straight woman, and I was defending her."
She said she was shocked to see that she had been locked out of her account. She said: "I read the tweet over and over looking for the thing that could have possibly gotten me locked out."
She said she didn't appeal and just deleted the tweet, but felt it was disturbing that Twitter's algorithm was apparently more willing to ban people who use the word "queer" as an identifier than to ban serial harassers.
Since then, Twitter emailed @theb00kwitch an apology, in an email seen by BuzzFeed News.
Well I just got this email...which is......................something.
She felt she only got the apology because of the attention her tweet received.
She said: "I think they only sent it because 400+ people QT’d my post and tagged Twitter, Twitter Support, and Jack [Dorsey, the company's CEO] so they had to respond. I think their algorithm is broken and they only care when they get this level of attention."
A spokesperson for Twitter told BuzzFeed News: "This was our mistake and has been reversed. We've reviewed what happened and have been in touch with the account owner."