In 2011, Twitter was a platform that helped keep people informed on politics and news from the ground. In Egypt, It was also a platform that amplified the voices of local dissidents who were part of the revolution. With live updates posted by many Egyptian users, people from around the world flocked to Twitter to witness live many of the events and updates coming from Egypt.

Today, Twitter has a different story, and it is not one of speaking truth to power. Twitter is no longer empowering its users. Its platform cannot be considered neutral. Twitter’s actions suggest it is systematically suppressing voices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

What started out as an investigation into the mass suspension of accounts of Egyptian dissidents, uncovered a mass censorship algorithm that targeted users who use Arabic flagging their text as hateful conduct. This story is still unfolding. As you read this, mass and unjustified systemic locking and suspension of Twitter Arabic accounts continues. Users are angry and bewildered.

Why now?

The timing is not accidental. Political engagement on Twitter peaked recently after Mohamed Ali, actor and contractor turned whistle blower, revealed corruption in Egypt’s military in early September. More recently he released a 30 September video calling for protests the next day at 3pm.

What follows suggest that Twitter has subsequently suspended accounts critical of the Egyptian government. Moreover, draconian yet lazy algorithms have systematically shut down voices of dissent – and pulled unsuspecting social media users down with them.

The effects of these suspensions was not just hiding a set of tweets critical of the government, but completely disabling the influence network of Egypt’s dissidents. This is potentially the first documented politically motivated mass shutdown of twitter accounts at a time when online interaction was high and translated to possible action on the ground. This is what Twitter was dedicated to avoiding as it opened a branch in the UAE.

While accusations of complicity of Twitter in the MENA region are rampant, the data gathered does not conclusively prove that an intervention at Twitter caused this, although it is highly likely. This is also because the data was partial. Indeed, these accusations are not limited to Egypt but the entire region who have a sense that being critical of their governments was met with punitive measures by Twitter against them.

Twitter did not respond to a question about how many Twitter accounts were suspended in the period we cover here, or whether there has been pressure from any Arab government.

Technology will always reproduce the biases of those training the system. What you are about to read reveals that many of those suspensions had a common denominator: being critical of the Egyptian government.

Mass suspensions

It started on 1 October, @Ganzeer, the well-known Egyptian graffiti artist, tweeted about his suspension. A string of complaints about unexplained suspensions followed. Analysis of Twitter threads revealed an overwhelming number: up to 150 accounts that claimed to have been suspended across just one week.

Ganzeer was given the following reasons:

Using a trending or popular hashtag with an intent to subvert or manipulate a conversation or to drive traffic or attention to accounts, websites, products, services, or initiatives; and

Tweeting with excessive, unrelated hashtags in a single Tweet or across multiple Tweets.



This Twitter rule did not apply to @Ganzeer’s tweets but more worrisome were many others who were suspended without even an excuse.

@SamiaRaoof, @DaliaNewYork and @elnggar_said, @iRafla were suspended around the same time. They later received emails that their accounts were suspended by mistake, some of them fairly quickly and others much later.

Many, like @Cairo67Unedited, a verified Twitter user, were baffled by the suspensions.

The suspensions seemed to have happened around late September and lasted from one day to a few days. In many cases Twitter had responded that they had suspended the accounts by mistake. The accounts affected varied from having a few followers to hundreds of thousands.

Some researchers and I set out to verify which accounts were restored and which remained suspended. We wanted to understand why these suspensions were taking place. Speculations were that Twitter’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) office faced pressure from Arab governments in order to curb the effect of social media dissidence.

These speculations come from a long history, starting form when it was revealed that the Saudis had a spy inside Twitter. Similarly, mistrust continued when a trending anti-Sisi hashtag disappeared suddenly in July 2018, and then later on in 2019. It didn’t help either to find that an officer in the British Army information warfare unit was head of editorial in Twitter for the MENA region.

An apology

The documentation of these accounts and the verification of some of their stories forced Twitter in the MENA region into an apology that offered no convincing cause or explanation.

It reads: Over the past period, while conducting routine checks on spam activities and other applications of Twitter rules, a number of accounts from Egypt were suspended by mistake. We apologize for that.

https://twitter.com/TwitterMENA/status/1182401453484322817

The apology came after many efforts from NGOs like EFF, SMEX and Access Now to get answers from Twitter. The apology was inaccurate. The accounts suspended were not just from Egypt. Accounts like @Ganzeer, @DaliaNewYork, @Cairo67Unedited and @Hend_Nafea were based in the US. Other accounts from the region were targeted and have been supportive of opposition to the Egyptian government.

More suspensions were happening after, on 6 October renowned literary author Ahdaf Soueif’s account was locked.

Twitter targets Arabic swear words as morality police

As we gathered more testimonies and documentation, we realized that some of the people claiming they were suspended were not back online, even after Twitter’s apology and opening up the appeals process. Appeals were constantly rejected.

I interviewed @OfficialAmro1, a user affected by mass suspensions with over 265K followers and 115K tweets. He was suspended without cause and added, “I don’t even curse.”

To which I foolishly replied, “Cursing would not suspend your account, particularly if directed against a public figure. Incitement will.”

“No, now it does,” he replied. He also added that if you criticize a figure loyal to the Arab regimes, you can get your account locked or suspended.

More people sent me their stories. This was staggering because many people had been in ‘Twitter jail’ for various reasons. It was then that I realized that there was other types of systematic Twitter suspensions happening over time and users’ Arabic tweets were marked as ‘hateful conduct’.

The 'hateful conduct' policy as defined by Twitter states: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

Analyzing the message contents that were flagged for hateful conduct I saw that most did not violate Twitter’s rules. Soon I began to discover that what @OfficialAmro1 had told me was true. The content I was seeing contained profanity. But that wasn’t the whole story.

Arabic curse words are used often. I sampled around a little under 50 claims, with over 30 screenshots that contain Twitter’s email identifying the violating tweet. It was clear that profanity alone was not causing the suspensions.

A few examples

One Twitter user @AElMassry was blocked for replying to one of his friends with the following: “A few ass kissers appeared during the time of the Muslim Brotherhood, became state loyalists with the appearance of the ass kisser.” Similarly @DaliaNewYork who lives in the United States was blocked on April 18th for an Arabic tweet that said “Tawadros(the Coptic pope) was an ass kisser”. (Dalia herself is Coptic)

Just the implication of an insult to a public figure can get your account locked or suspended. So when @mostafamahdi202 decided to accuse an Egyptian member of Parliament of being an hypocrite, he used a term that is not even a profanity, but a gentler term that sounds much like it, and Twitter deemed the criticism as hateful conduct. There’s a difference of a dot, but in pop culture it is a non-swear word that bears the same connotation.

Translation: “Brother, behold, opposition and supporters and all of Egypt did not agree except to one thing, that you are a widener (widener here is a word that sounds like ass kisser)”.

Tragically funnier still are those who were joking around with their friends using their usual language that has profanities @ism3lawy_ ended up cursing Egypt’s Zamalek football club and for that his account was suspended permanently along with that of one of his friends. In a separate conversation, his friend @EHAB_M0 was also joking around with his friends and eventually got a permanent suspension.

And it’s not just insulting a football club that will land you in ‘Twitter jail’. When @YoussefAmr1907 tweeted: “The film is a son of a bitch and the central bank is a son of a bitch,” his account got suspended. For the record the movie he was insulting was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Another account @Armed007, now permanently suspended responded once: “With all my love Mr. Gamal… Fuck you.”

It even had a little heart next to it.

On a more serious note, here is one that should raise the alarm even for the morality police.

Here @semsema_looma responds to her friend by criticizing the use of ‘whore’ as a constant example. She says: “They have nothing but the filthy example of the prostitute. Even the prostitute has become sick of how much you stick to her.”

Analyzing the ‘ass-kissing’ effect

These suspensions almost always happen whenever the tweet is a reply to a user, even if the content does not address that particular user. But it’s not that straight forward. There seems to be more complex calculations.