Let’s remind briefly: A few days ago, Twitter removed the ability to add Ukrainian mobile numbers to the account. In total, this was done for 30 operators around the world, thereby disabling the double authentication function and therefore entering a secure page and registering with the number. Musk describes these actions of the social network as “a fight against bots.” It is not clear whether this means that he views all Ukrainians as bots. Regardless, almost all publications, including UNITED24, have written about it. The very next day, December 14, ended up in the so-called “shadow bath”.

What happened?

A shadow ban is a restriction that a social network puts on an account to prevent the spread of information from an account. Pages covered by such a ban, does not appear in users’ feeds, does not appear in searches, etc.. At the same time, they are completely unblocked and retain their ability to broadcast.

About The absence of UNITED24 in the search was reported by users who subscribed to the publication. They can only go to the page if there is a direct link. It is reported that social network moderators can also cut off access to the feed.

We tested it and still managed to find the page in the search. Presumably, the ban was quickly lifted.

Search for UNITED24 on Twitter / Screenshot of Channel 24

Of course, there is no confirmation of the connection between the publication of the disconnection of the numbers and the ban, as the company does not comment on such things. After users started complaining en masse about the issue, Twitter quickly unblocked carriers (at least some of them) and said the outage was due to “changes in routing configuration”.