How Twitter’s Bot Witch Hunt Ironically Targets The 1st Women-Led Incubator on web3
As you all know for the past week our official IncubateX Twitter account has been shut down without warning. It may seem like this is another story of a woman on her knees, and to be honest with you, I’ve had those thoughts over the past week. Most of you are wondering where does IncubateX go from here, and before I answer this question for you, allow me to give you a little bit of context about the project’s journey so far and what we plan to do.
The date is December 30, 2021, ages ago in NFT Standard Time. Me and my longtime business partner are in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica on a rainy day having an excited conversation about the insane momentum we’re witnessing in the NFT space, and what massive opportunities lay on the horizon for humanity as we, as a species, figure out how to innovate with the help of this new digital infrastructure.
I’m used to taking on new challenges, and when we decided to build a web3 sandbox from which to launch innovative project after innovative project, utilizing NFTs to redefine industries and create IRL impact, a fire lit up inside of me, IncubateX was born, and execution mode was undoubtedly activated.
We wasted no time in getting to work. We did our research, assembled our core team, created project structures like we did for each one of the companies we started before; whether it’s renewable energy, logistics, ecommerce, or web3, the pillars of structure are the same.
We’re old school, which everyone in the NFT space who’s over 25 probably feels like they are, we approached this market the only way we knew how: BUILD before you SELL. It might sound like such a revolutionary concept in this space; too many projects hit the market way before they have any real tangible idea on how to build what they promise.
My team and I couldn’t do that. If we promise people that we will deliver something, we plan and document ahead of time how we’re going to deliver, how much it costs to deliver, when we could deliver… you get the idea.
At the time, we had no idea we were the 1st women-led incubator and NFT launchpad on web3, focusing on projects with ties to IRL operations. We were busy developing the project to notice. We knew that no one else offered the NFT utility we planned to release through the projects in the IncubateX pipeline, it was just a sobering realization to see just how underrepresented women and LGBTQ led projects were in web3.
We were building. The bear market was starting to show itself, we were very stressed. We wanted to launch before the bear market set its grip on reality, and it made us work 10X harder, 10X faster. At this point, we were all skipping self-care because simply no one had the time, and we all put our energy and every last second in our day into building a high quality project. Neglecting our families and everything else.
You know what happens when people push themselves to the breaking point? They break. Some people left the team, they understandably couldn’t handle the insane pressure and the increasingly loud voices telling us that we were destined to fail in this market. No one was doing what we were doing, why should we succeed?!!
We kept going because again, this is not my first rodeo. I’ve created and lost teams more than I could remember so things were still manageable. We were making a huge traction in gathering our community on Twitter. We had been posting religiously for 4 months to raise awareness and gather our tribe. Twitter has always been ground zero of our community building efforts.
We declared June 30,2022 to be our mint day, and kicked off our go-to-market efforts to ensure the success of IncubateX and the projects in its pipeline.
Things went beautifully for a few days, and then suddenly, Twitter decided to permanently disable our account. Without warnings, without any prior violations, they just shut us down. Like it’s nothing. And to them, it is nothing, it’s just another account. To us though, it was a devastating blow.
It literally felt like someone took the voice of the project away, and we were voiceless. Dramatic I know but it really felt like that. There goes the community we’ve been building, the messaging we’ve been pushing out, the rapport we developed with the people who resonated with us, GONE. without a trace.
We appealed three times , Twitter didn’t even acknowledge our requests. We sent proof of identity documents & company paperwork from our attorney to let them know that hey, we’re not the bot accounts you’re after. We hear nothing back. We’re not the loudest voice in the room yet, we know we’re an easy target, but we sincerely expected to be treated a little bit better than that.
I want you to imagine what it feels like to be in the middle of building something big with blood sweat and tears, in a bear market, with infinite voices of doubt surrounding you, you spent 6 figures to give the project life to deliver value before you demand support, your closest family and friends don’t even understand what you’re working on like a maniac, and then suddenly, what you have to show for your non-stop work over the past 6 months, your community, gets demolished in a second without warning, without explanation, just gone.
The irony in the whole situation is that web3 was created to make possible the idea that things like this don’t happen, that centralized censorship and decision making is inherently flawed and that power imbalance primarily targets those with quieter voices in the room, typically women and minorities.
I feel like our IncubateX account was taken down because of an irresponsible decision made in a series of hasty actions implemented by Twitter in a superficial attempt to salvage its reputation. And in this false demonstration of “taking action to get rid of bots” on the platform, women led projects are some of the easiest targets for random removal.
Instead of pushing those -already few- projects off the platform, how about supporting them and giving them a little bit of visibility? Or at the very least, don’t stand in their way and stunt their efforts and squash their communities at the click of a button, like it’s nothing. Because for them, it really is something.
Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Including those who work insanely hard to create a better version of this world for everyone in it.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Massy. I know something about overcoming obstacles in life. I was diagnosed with major depression when I was 17, migrated from the Middle East to the USA at 19, graduated with my BBA while sometimes working two jobs after school, living alone for the first time in a strange place, without my friends or family. Calling cards were a thing back then, and I bought those daily.
Still struggling with major depression for which I had failed to find a cure until that point. I worked my way up to consult for a $75 million project for a big tech firm, before taking the leap with my life & business partner to start our own renewable energy company, which led me down a path of serial entrepreneurship that included successful ventures, lucrative exists & heartbreaking failures.
Throughout the course of the years, I overcame the dark grip of depression, and as a side hustle I taught myself how to trade & invest in crypto which led me to discover a passion for decentralization & utilizing it to serve humanity.
What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been trained to learn & get better as adversity touches down in my life. This is just another “Monday” for me and my brilliant team. Here’s what we decided to do: we are going to go to mint WITHOUT a Twitter account for the foreseeable future and are REBUILDING our community on Discord.
If you would like to be a part of the newly rebuilt community we would love to have you in our Discord at the link below. & if you’re a project who would like to support us with our effort of rebuilding the community & would like to collaborate, thank you! Please email us at partnerships@incubatex.io
Say no to bullying, and YES to cooperation in the spirit of decentralization.
Sincerely,
Massy
