Official Twitter Trust and Safety VP, Del Harvey, Accused of Corruption
Twitter is known as a place to speak your mind and connect with others. It’s become one of the most frequently used and well-known social media sites on the Internet. It has been referred to as “Trump’s megaphone”, among other nicknames to emphasize the power that exists on the site. With great power, comes great responsibility …
So What Is Happening?
The story begins in early May of 2020. Dozens of large accounts with over 10,000 followers were suspended all at once, with most of the account owners reporting that they did not even receive an email with their suspension reason. Understandably, this evoked anger and confusion in the account owners and their supporters which caused them to dig deeper.
Upon some investigation, a user named @SpazioTwat, who we will refer to as “Spaz”, emerges as a significant character. Spaz was known for making posts like these:
Which would usually lead to:
Acting as some sort of vigilante that looks for “platform manipulators”, he’d call them out on his account. He would do this regularly:
Every user that he targeted in the screenshots ended up getting suspended. In the last screenshot, @xsqoof and @rudy_mustang were both suspended shortly after Spaz made that tweet. Every account that he would target would eventually end up getting suspended, even with flimsy proof of his accusations. Usually, he’d screenshot someone retweeting someone else, someone following a user he is targeting, or viral posts he believed were impossible to obtain on the platform. Viral tweets happen every day as Twitter curates the best content on the site, yet he acted like if you had a viral tweet you had partaken in some illegal black magic.
Because every account he targeted ended up suspended shortly after, suspicions raised that something was amiss.
One user that was suspended on the platform, known as @LameAsChris, dug deeper to find that a few months back another popular account was suspended with no explanation. A user spoke out against the suspension:
And Chris found good ol’ Spaz in the replies:
So far, nothing too strange has come up except for a Twitter vigilante that seems to be able to suspend any account he targets at will. However, it gets deeper.
Now It Gets Weird
After finding this reply, Chris looked at who @delbius is, and that user turns out to be Twitter’s VP of Trust and Safety, Del Harvey. Interestingly, a connection was drawn between Del and Spaz. She would like his tweets, as evidenced in the screenshot below.
They were also exposed as “mutuals”, people who mutually follow each other on Twitter.
This connection raises some legitimate questions. Are these two friends? Are they in contact? Chris dug further to find that Spaz admitted to having a direct contact at Twitter:
In another screenshot, he bragged about getting a user suspended:
He hints at something deeper going on by saying “That would be telling”. But in this screenshot, he makes his connection loud and clear:
Spaz’s narcissism led him to brag a bit too much about his “bastard” reputation and how he has an “enhanced” relationship with Twitter Support.
To summarize this section’s endpoints, it is clear that Spaz and Del at the very least know each other. Spaz often brags about having an “enhanced” relationship with Twitter Support, who Del leads. Put two and two together, and it is not unreasonable to question if Del and Spaz have an inappropriate relationship. It raises the theory that Spaz was just sending over anyone he wanted suspended to Del, and Del would satisfy his requests.
But Was Spaz Just Being a Good Apple And Reporting Rulebreakers?
A question you might have is: “Was Spaz just doing a good service to Support and sending them rule breakers he encountered?” Well, let me present some more information.
Spaz posted a picture of Rudy’s profile with nothing else. There was no evidence here to prove he was manipulating the platform in any way. He also seems to get a high off what he is doing, as seen by his bold “Who’s next?” statement. In a viral tweet posted by @iucipur, he shouted out some of his friends in the tweet reply.
Spaz comes in, saying “Thank you for this list”, as if he is thanking the user for providing a list of “platform manipulators” that he can target in the future. There is no evidence that anyone here is manipulating the platform, yet he draws that conclusion right away.
He also targeted another user named Based Savage who has 80,000+ Instagram followers. He concluded that he only became famous on Twitter due to platform manipulation thanks to his “friends”, leaving out that he has a large following on another platform already. He draws the connection between his “friends” and Based Savage solely off the observation that they follow his account. One user following him is enough for him to determine that the platform was being manipulated. Nothing else.
This user, Chase, called out Spaz with a collage of racist and sexist tweets he has posted. Not too long after that, you guessed it:
Spaz was not acting in good faith. He would irrationally conclude that there was a mass conspiracy behind every viral tweet and account that would grow fast. Many users that grew rapidly like Albert, Based Savage, and others would regularly be suspended with little to no explanation for their suspensions. Spaz would even brag about getting Albert suspended, as if it was some sort of accomplishment.
If Spaz had evidence of these users manipulating the platform, he would be more convincing. However, there was rarely any evidence. His conclusions would be based off two main factors:
- High follower counts
- Viral posts
If a user had both, they were manipulating the platform in his eyes. There was nothing else to it for him. This evidence would hardly hold in a court of law, but to Twitter, it was seemingly firm enough to suspend anyone he targeted. But it gets even worse.
Twitter Allowing Spaz to Violate Multiple Rules
Spaz had quite a mouth on him. In fact, he had numerous racist posts on his account:
As per Twitter Rules,
You cannot degrade others, dehumanize others or use hateful imagery. Yet, it was very clear that with Spaz’s use of blackface and constant other racist degrading jokes, he was getting a free pass. But this isn’t the only rule he has violated. Spaz seemed to be a bit obsessed with a user named @ogmaxb, who he called out not once, not twice, but EIGHT times on his account.
He posted a call out tweet towards this particular individual eight times in less than 2 months. As per Twitter Rules,
Publicly posting and humiliating a user over eight times in less than 2 months would certainly be classified as encouraging harassment of that individual. Instead of simply reporting the user, he has to name and shame him over eight times to all of his followers. He also does not remove the tags of the users he posts, which encourages his followers to take a look at the accounts he targets.
Twitter claims that some tweets are not clearly targeting other users. However, when a user posts about one particular individual over eight times with intent to shame them, a pattern emerges.
Conclusion
Not only has this user shown patterns of hateful, racist speech, but he also has a pattern of harassing specific individuals that he seems to get a high off persecuting. Yet, his account is still up. His violations of the Twitter Rules seem to be completely ignored, while others get suspended solely because they have a lot of followers or viral tweets.
This user also has questionable ties to Del Harvey, who is the VP of Twitter Trust & Safety. There is no certainty that they are working together, but the information provided here certainly gives off an impression that something is deeply wrong with Twitter’s support system. His bragging, his effectiveness, and his untouchableness raise serious concerns. At the very least, Twitter owes its users, some of which are passionately active and the reason why the site is popular, answers to the following questions:
- Why does every person that Spaz targets, sometimes with zero proof besides a screenshot of viral tweets or simply that one user follows another, end up getting suspended?
- Is there any form of system to mitigate or prevent abuses of power like these by employees?
- Why do some users not even receive a suspension reason, but others do?
- What “enhanced relationship” is Spaz talking about?
- Why is Del, someone who clearly isn’t handling her responsibility correctly, in a position with so much power?
- Do your employees normally do lots of favors for their friends, and suspend anyone on command?
I am sure there are many more questions lingering, but not everything can be asked. Regardless, I hope Twitter Support can improve from their mistakes and handle their jobs a bit more professionally. Thanks for reading.
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Chris’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsWANjF_y4j0C-AzQvYdmEQ
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