what happend while I was away for the last few days



my sincerest apologies for the inactivity for the last few days!! I'm sure you're all confused about my sudden mentions via other accounts, but let's go back from the beginning to see how it all went down.

the rate limit


the rate-limiting twt posted by Elon had a major impact on the users, that in some cases they have been complaining abt not seeing others' tweets until a certain point. for me, Idk if it was related with the twt I posted cuz the feed on my Ubuntu PC (initially) wasn't showing, but I can tweet just fine. I'm not rlly sure if some trends broke twtr or it relates to the rate limits (tho I doubt on the latter), but

as soon as I realized that was a thing, I took some precautionary measures and looked for some recommendations abt ways to 'still see twts' despite the rate limits. more on that on the next heading.

the OldTwitter extension



I took the risk to implement that, to the point that it gets pretty confusing already. I mean, the navigation between the old and new twtr (which imo the former brings back memories) became a chore. who would've thought that the mobile.twitter.com that I usually navigate to is already redirected to twitter.com? either way, the ONLY way to bring the new UI is to append ?newtwitter=true at the end of the url.

anyway, as soon as I realized that, I disabled the extension. not cuz the new twtr ui is amazing (admittedly I like the change of pace), but I don't wanna risk getting 'flagged as a bot' which will be in the next heading.

This request looks like it might be automated.

as I try to interact after disabling the extension, the twt refuses to send a message. every time I try to interact -- sending likes, retweeting, and even saving a tweet as a draft -- doesn't do anything. they all returned this ANNOYING dialog as shown below.



I decided to continue finding a workaround for a fix, which includes having to use a phone for this operation, as well as using a VPN. but even that didn't work, which infuriated me as the latter part employed a different IP.

which led me to believe that this so-called 'account flagging' is done AT AN ACCOUNT LEVEL.

out of sheer frustration, I researched this whole flagging thing on google and found an article by Grow Following about potential reasons and ways to remediate the issue. feeling defeated by the sole purpose of an extension, I decided to take a break from my account and scramble myself across accounts I own -- primarily GourmetDayLife. (I initially went for SakuraSumiyoi but I don't want my existing followers to know abt this r18 acct in the first place; not to mention the amount of absurdity I retweeted in most cases, which makes SakuraSumiyoi the SakuraSumiyoi everyone knows about.)


it timed that I was about to stream the following day, so I used my PR to know that I'll temporarily switch accounts at the moment while at the same time announcing the stream. the stream ended successfully.

other events, like the Daily Kaiser, was also moved to that account as well as a temporary measure, since the account in question is originally for the topic -- Princess Connect! Re:Dive. I somehow became surprised that the same IP that had my mainstream account flagged didn't affect my accounts, as I have 5 logged in to the same browser instance (thanks multiple accounts feature).

but my quest for waiting has gone far enough, and tried to interact with the tweeters after a few hours initially. it went just fine, until a few interactions later. I was about to reply to one of my moots when the dialog kicked in again. but atleast I got the gist of what to do when things go down south.

fast-forward to multiple hours leading to the release of this blog (tho I tried interacting again while writing this one), and everything went fine!! I was now able to do the primal interactions like I used to, and even tweeted some things in the process!! I'm technically back in full force -- but I need to publish this blog first before I go amok in tweeting and stuff.

conclusion

while it's a necessity that some external services offer anti-tracking and bypass from the limits as the author of the extension claimed, ALWAYS be careful in utilizing them. I'd best recommend that you do that thing in a testing environment, or on an account that you feel like interacting less. that way, your usual activities will stay at a normal state.

while we're at it, I would like Elon and Twitter to reconsider the consequences when it comes to these limits and more (not to mention accessing TweetDeck requires subscribing to Twitter Blue), because not everyone can afford the service, you know? I might, but that's my discretion. if people absolutely aren't paying for Blue, then atleast be considerate towards your users. if you don't, people will then switch to a rival social network that will outweigh the possibilities of your platform. I understand this is for money, but which comes first: investors or the users? don't try to be YouTube and their YouTube Premium tactics where adblocking can limit how users watch videos, cuz Google cares more about advertisers than their users anyhow.

tl;dr

in a nutshell: after trying the OldTwitter extension in awareness of the tweet limits, I find myself back into the nostalgia (which didn't end quite well), and having my mainstream account 'flagged as a bot' that I resorted to GourmetDayLife out of defeat.

remarks

don't take these extensions too lightly. even if they promise a tracking prevention and bypass to the limits (or anything Twitter enforces in the future), there's no certainty that it'll be the same once you step out of that department. your account might get flagged or locked, or worse, getting banned indefinitely without an appeal. make backup accounts if you want to, and disclose as much info as possible if things went south or sideways.



published