My Twitter name is @DianeRavitch. I have about 146,000 followers. My account is instantly recognizable because it has my photo and a few symbolic emojis.
In late 2022, someone created a Twitter account called @Ravitch_Diane. It has no emojis, no photo and 81 followers.
The fake account has now taken control of my Twitter account. Anything I post goes to the fake Twitter account.
I tried to fill out the form to complain about the impersonation, sent my ID and photo, got verified, but failed to submit because the last instruction said, “Open your email account” before submitting. Each time I followed instructions but was unable to submit. The last hurdle made no sense.
Meanwhile I went to the fake account and saw that it was registered to an unfamiliar email. I couldn’t delete it or change it but I could change my birthdate and the handle. My birthdate is July 1, 1938. I changed it to another year, I forget which, but probably 2012. I was immediately locked out of Twitter because I’m too young! (Oh, to be 12 again!)
Not only was the fake account locked but so was my genuine account. This demonstrates that the two were interlocked. The hacker and I.
This is not the biggest problem in the world these days, but I would be grateful for your help.
Please contact X and ask them to ban the hacker, eliminate the fake account, and restore my real account.
When I changed the handle on the fake account, I made it now @goToMyRealAcct
I am now completely locked out and you alone can save me!
Needless to say, there is no customer service to whom one may speak. Like, a human being.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a bizarre company X is–one in which one cannot even talk to them about getting their service to work. Horrible. I wish everyone would just move from it. Go to Quora.
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Sent a request to Elon Musk Susan Edelman Reporter 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10036 917-584-7675 sedelman@nypost.com [image: Inline image 3]
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What a nightmare!
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Maybe you’re being punished for your extreme partisan belief that Joe Biden is still all there. 65% of DEMOCRATS want him to drop out of the race. OK, I understand: 65% of Democratic voters are Putin trolls trying to depress the pro-Biden vote.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-poll-drop-out-debate-democrats-59eebaca6989985c2bfbf4f72bdfa112?user_email=c075daca6d7d3d35e3f27ed877a925ecbd48722dc46d48aa04ccc24735d579e3&utm_medium=Afternoon_Wire&utm_source=Sailthru_AP&utm_campaign=AfternoonWire_July17_2024&utm_term=Afternoon%20Wire
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So, you approve of this action by “free speech advocate” Elon the Great and Terrible Wizard of X?
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Seems to be a hack of a way to harvest Elon praise…
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So, what’s next? Satan buys WordPress, renames it Semicolon (;), and fires half the staff?
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Boycott Tesla.
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I wouldn’t waste my money on a self-driving bonfire of a car. I wouldn’t spend an obscene amount of money on any car.
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“bonfire of a car”
LOL
Bonfire of a car that doesn’t recognize a baby stroller in a crosswalk.
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I wouldn’t drive a Tesla if it was free. A very dear friend of mine and his wife were in a collision with a Tesla. The Tesla exploded and everyone died in both cars. My friend and his wife were both medical doctors. He was a pulmonologist and she was an ER surgeon. They saved lives. The firemen couldn’t put out the Tesla fire. Lithium Battery burned for two hours. Nothing remained.
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My lord, Diane. So sorry for your loss!
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Many years ago, when I had a pulmonary embolism, that pulmonologist saved my life. Whenever I drive past the spot where the Tesla turned into a fire bomb, I think of him. He was driving a regular SUV, not the Tesla. It was late at night and no one knows what happened. Just that the Tesla’s lithium battery created an inferno that could not be quenched with water.
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Oh my lord. Blessed be his memory for what he did for you!
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How terrible!
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BTW, I just saw a news report that Vantz is the Yiddish word for bedbug.
J.D. Vantz.
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As of 5:30pm EST, I can’t find the fake account. I did see it this morning. Your main page is still there.
How were you able to change the handle on the fake account if that is the hacker? When I tried to login to Twitter, select “Forgot Password,” and entered a username, it asked me for the email address associated with that account.
This is so strange. I am sorry you are dealing with this. The social media companies don’t really have customer service at all, leaving many people to have to start over from scratch.
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Thanks, R. I’m completely locked out of Twitter so I can’t see what’s there. I wrote to verify who I am, with drivers license but no response yet.
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When I was running ads for two of my books on YouTube, which Google owns, after several months with no problems, an automated Google App (they didn’t call them AIs then) told me in an email that I had to prove I’m human or I’d lose my advertising account.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t prove to Google that I was human. Copies of my drivers license didn’t work. That was the only ID I was willing to provide.
After I was locked out, I kept getting emails that Google wanted my business back. When I replied that I couldn’t prove I was human, I actually got a call from a human salesman.
I asked that human salesman why Google was asking me to start running ADs again when I’m not supposed to be human. Like “Why are you calling me if Google has decided I’m not human?”
That so-called human didn’t know what to do. I hung up after telling that human salesman I don’t have time for this BS. Don’t contact me again.
Occasionally I still get an automated “We want your business back ” email from Google but delete it with no reply.
I had enough of that BS. I was the one paying them for the clicks I was getting through those ADs. They weren’t paying me.
I’ve been trying to get rid of BING AI on my Windows based desktop for years now and nothing has worked, even the long list of things Bing AI provided on how to get rid of it. After wasting hours, with frustration and anger growing, I decided to quit and bought the iMac desktop which I’m using now.
But, a few months ago WordPress decided to stop getting along with the Apple iMac but still gets along with the Microsoft desktop.
It’s insane.
Like the Trump cultist in my VA PTSD support group (the only one in that group of vets) who thinks all of Trump’s crimes are liberal lies, a plot to demonize his god Trump. I told him liberals aren’t the only ones that think Trump is a fraud and rapist, that there are millions of traditional conservatives and Republicans too who call themselves Never Trumpers.
I asked him if he’d ever years of the Lincoln Project. He said he’d never heard of them.
I sent him a link to their site, even I think it will never change his mind.
Like Trump boasted, he could shoot someone and not lose voters.
From AI to Trump, its insane.
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Lloyd,
The time will come when those of us who remember customer service by a courteous human being will be gone. I can’t stand the mechanization of everything. It makes people short tempered.
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Watch the whole video, Diane. You will relate.
https://youtu.be/QILNSgou5BY?si=bpXHFtD6yTzd-Wd9
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Hi Diane: I know very little about Twitter having never used it. But I am completely aware of trying to get to a real person–when a fake voice keeps guessing at my problem in a list of problems that never hit the mark. It’s just a series of canned problems that, when pressed, lead to solutions that don’t match the problem. ANYTHING NOT to have to bring a real person in to discuss.
But I think your experience with TWITTER teeters on the edge of a huge abyss where it’s just too easy for some oligarch/fascist-technician to close down the FREE SPEECH (that depends on communications venues) of those who do not agree with their political interests. They know all the specialist subtleties.
That’s just one of the problems that will hurry down the pike if Trump wins.
With what’s going on over the weekend, I stay in a constant state of political shudder. CBK
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That’s right, CBK. The world is being reduced to an algorithm, and people like us have nothing to say about it.
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Sounds very helpful to Russia RepubliQans in the run up to election season to sideline one of the most influential liberal voices defending public schools just as a voucher-loving, election-denying, billionaire-owned VP ascends to the top of the Trump treason hierarchy.
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This isn’t the only example. Facebook redid its algorithm, and this reduced Diane’s friends on the platform by many thousands of people. This happened shortly after “choice” advocate Campbell Brown went to work for FB.
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Same thing happened to me on a smaller scale. I had a couple thousand FB followers, and after they redid the algorithm, only about 10 people regularly receive my posts. I think it’s a purge of progressives.
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Bob: At the core of it, it’s “sore loser.” My take: the mentality is that the neo-GOP have lost hope in winning so they aren’t playing the democracy game anymore.
Reading the 2025 document, (a purported replacement for the U.S. Constitution) They are even after the basics of citizenship. It will depend on “the party.” To them, “Make America Great Again,” really means make America unrecognizable . . . by any prior definition of it.
Lock them up . . . Do a massive sweep to save the country. . . they are a clear and present dangers to very core what really makes the United States of America great. CBK
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The Repugnicans are pretty sure now that they are going to win this one. Adam Schiff is no fool.
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Bob: No fool. . . . nor is Nancy Pelosi, who is a political supreme. My thoughts are that Joe Biden can do the job, and even if he dies or is incapacitated in office, Kamala is there as well as democracy as we know it.
The politics of the movement, however, is strong and, sadly, about optics and money more than the good of the country, from the polity on both sides. And my thought is that Nancy knows. Also, there is something to be said about unplugging the GOP hate machine that is specifically aimed at Biden for so long. (It takes time to really get into a person’s psyche (like MAGA).
If Biden steps down, gladly for us Kamala (and so many others) will still be there. At this point in time, I just hope of all hopes that they and we can carry the project over the line, with Biden’s help. At least the optics will go away and the power of the money will probably return. And for this old(er) woman with a hearing problem, I’ll be able to understand what they are saying. CBK
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Yes. When the Fascist revolution comes, it will continue to use all the fine phrases from the past about Liberty, Justice, Equal Opportunity for All, Patriotism, and so on. And these will all be given Orwellian meanings. The complete subversion of the Constitution will become “the Fulfillment of the Promise of the Constitution.” “Blessed are the peacemakers” will become “One achieves peace by removing undesirable elements.” And so on. The current Repugnican FascistFest 2024: Triumph of the Trumpian Will, supplies moment-by-moment examples of this Animal Farm-like reinterpretation. The voice of the people becomes “as embodied in Glorious Leader.”
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Do not click on this link. It’s from some sort of nasty spammer.
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Thank you for the quick warning, Bob. I deleted the scammer’s links. “You can’t trust anyone these days. Trust me. Hit this link and make instant money!” Repeat. Repeat.
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Do not click on this link. It’s from some sort of nasty spammer.
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Do not click on this link. It’s from some sort of nasty spammer.
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For a time, I worked for a technology consulting firm, and one of the things they did is replace human customer service people with phone trees. Well, I got a bit of Karma for that.
One of my daughters was caught in a home fire. She inhaled a lot of smoke and had to have a tracheotomy. And her doctors ordered for us a machine that was used to clean the trach in her throat should it become clogged. Without this cleaning, she could suffocate and die.
So, one day she was experiencing difficulty breathing through the trach, and I went to use the machine, and it wasn’t working. So I called the Tech Support hotline written on the machine. I got a phone decision tree for some huge conglomerate with hundreds and hundreds of companies, each with their own phone trees with many options. It was impossible to navigate. Meanwhile, my daughter was saying she was choking.
I got off the phone and fiddled with the machine until I figured out what was wrong. Thanks be to all the gods. I was able to vacuum her trach, and she was able to breathe again.
She almost died because we have turned vital functions over to machines.
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She was the victim of an arson fire. Long story, that, but she is fine now, and the perpetrator is in prison for sixty years.
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Fine now after 36 (yes, you read that right, 36) operations.
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Bob, so true. Thank God you are so resourceful.
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On another recent topic, this:
(1) Facebook
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I did go onto Twitter/X early this morning to try and lend you a hand, Diane. You’re a great voice in our society that shouldn’t be trifled with or, worse, silenced.
But Twitter/X is a like a house of mirrors. It’s hard to find a connection to send a note to anyone. Or, maybe that’s me being an old fart, too, ha, ha.
It reminds me of when my credit card number was swiped online a decade ago. The endless phone trees and robo answerers made a bad situation so much worse.
These corporations make it much easier to talk to a human when the corporations want to sell us something. When it comes to a problem with what we bought, yeah, that’s a different department.
The Department of Insanity.
And, funny (NOT!) how some people love to complain about “the government” but corporations get a pass.
The public high school I worked at, after a brief phone message, a real, live person would be on the line to help parents, the community, really, anyone within a minute or two. Try THAT with a business.
If there’s an avenue to lodge a complaint with Twitter/X, I’d be glad to give it another shot later on your behalf.
Going outside now, though, to work on my homemade dog park of sorts.
No computers. Just hammers, nails and lumber.
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The only thing worse than a canned answer is a canned question. CBK
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Dear John,
Thank you for your efforts on my behalf. I keep trying to contact Twitter to get restored but I can’t reach a human to explain that I’m over the age of consent.
Frustrating but I’ll treat it as a vacation from the only social media I use other than this blog. Like you, I feel a certain comfort in human contact and interacting with tangible things.
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Diane: “Like you, I feel a certain comfort in human contact and interacting with tangible things.”
From a philosophical perspective: BIGTIME. CBK
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