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How to delete a suspended Twitter account

• April 18, 2022

There are at least two things that can happen to your Twitter account – you can either delete or Twitter might choose to suspend it. Deleting your account ensures Twitter no longer keeps your info like email and phone number. This is essential if you intend to use the two in the future to open a new account.

But what if your account got suspended before you could delete it? Things get a bit complicated.

Unlike an active account, a suspended Twitter account doesn’t have the “Deactivate” option making it impossible to delete. So how do you go about the whole process? Let’s explore the ins and outs of a suspended Twitter account below – including how to delete it.

Why Your Twitter Account Might Be Suspended

Most of the time it’s not going to be clear why your account was suspended. Twitter doesn’t seem to care enough about letting users know of their crimes before getting kicked off the platform. The usual explanation is along the lines of “violation of Twitter Rules” which doesn’t help much.

Nevertheless, here’s a breakdown of some of the most common reasons why accounts get suspended:

Harassment

This is pretty straightforward – you’ll get into trouble if you go around harassing other Twitter users or being generally abusive. Usually, Twitter might not know right away unless that user reports you. And if enough people report you, you can be sure Twitter is going to check out your account and possibly suspend it.

Spamming

Twitter themselves claim this to be the number one reason for account suspension. What spamming means can be a bit of a grey area seeing as most people become victims of this rule.

But for starters, spamming (according to Twitter) involves:

• Tweeting too much – think hundreds of tweets per day.
• Sending out tons of replies, mentions, and direct messages.
• Repeatedly tweeting or sending messages consisting of links only.
• Posting the same tweet/reply repeatedly.

And so on. Many accounts get wrongfully suspended for this reason, though.

Mass follows and unfollows

Suddenly following hundreds of users is going to raise a flag, especially for new users. Even worse is when you decide to unfollow a huge chunk of these people.

To Twitter’s eyes, that’s suspicious. They view it as a way to inflate your follower count and might also consider you a bot. To an extent, Twitter also considers this to be spam and will quickly whisk you off the platform.

Misusing Hashtags

This is especially true for popular/trending hashtags. Every tweet under such hashtags must be directly related to the particular hashtag. To attract Twitter’s wrath, though, you’ll have to wrongly use the hashtags every day over a certain period.

Another issue with hashtags that might doom your account is stringing together a lot of unrelated hashtags just so you could appear in multiple popular topics.

Account at Risk

Sometimes Twitter can suspend your account as a way to protect you from a potential data breach. That’s if they suspect your account has had unauthorized access. It might be inconvenient but it does help with securing your account until you verify your details.

What Happens When Your Twitter Account is Suspended?

A good deal of your profile changes once your Twitter account is suspended. Of course, it remains online on Twitter’s servers but that’s about it.

Your bio, tweets, replies, and some other general information on your profile will be hidden from public view. Only your display name and username will be visible.  Instead of your tweet feed, anyone attempting to check out your profile will be greeted by a blank page and a notice of your account suspension.

Other Twitter users cannot engage with you.

Despite this, your email address, username, and phone number will still be tied to the suspended account. So you cannot open another account using these details.

Deleting Your Suspended Twitter Account

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to delete a suspended Twitter account. Actually, it’s impossible to do anything on the account.

But you can at least sign in. This offers you an opportunity to appeal the suspension. If you’re successful in convincing Twitter to reactivate your account, you can then proceed to now delete it.

Wrapping up

Twitter suspends accounts when you go against any of their laid down rules. This can be a bit of a hurdle if you wish to delete your account since once it’s suspended, you cannot delete/deactivate it.

Your only shot is to get Twitter to lift the suspension and follow the usual way of deleting an account.

Faqs

Conclusion

Twitter might suspend your account for a number of different reasons, including harassment, spamming, mass follows/unfollows, and misusing hashtags. The potential reason for a suspension is usually going to be documented as “violation of Twitter rules,” but this is not always the case.