HN Twitter bot locked due to “distribution of hacked material”?

2 points by c17r 5y ago ↗ HN

Hello, I run the bot https://twitter.com/hn_frontpage which, as the name suggests, any story that makes it to the homepage gets tweeted out.

Just now got this email from twitter: https://i.imgur.com/YYOZ8Vu.png

No link to the tweet so no idea which story caused it. Tried to log in to see if there is anymore information and all I know is the account is locked for 12 hours.

I've been busy today so haven't been paying attention to HN. Any idea which story could have kicked this off?

2 comments

[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 17.2 ms ] thread

knaq 5y ago ↗

That message isn't as generic as it seems. It was introduced for political censorship, to suppress information detrimental to Biden. This is mainly the content of Hunter Biden's laptop hard drive, which wasn't even hacked. (he abandoned it, subject to state law and a computer repair contract) There was also a GMail account of a former business partner that was voluntarily turned over to reporters.

Stories about the laptop occasionally show up on HN, quickly flagged into oblivion. FYI, the video actually exists, but even the Biden-hating sites usually don't provide links because it is extremely NSFW. Those... scenes... are forever burned into my brain.

c17r 5y ago ↗

Now that the lock expired on the account, the story that was causing the problem was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25181902. The tweet has been removed and the twitter bot is back up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience. First time in 5 years it's happened and hopefully the last time.