Twitter Is Killing My Popular Air Pollution App With A Silent Ban. Please Help!
tl;dr — I believe that clean air is a basic human right. Air pollution a global health crisis that causes 6.5 million people to die prematurely every year. 200,000 deaths every year in USA alone. When I realized that, among other things, I made Twitter app/chatbot called Smokey to put the world’s air quality data at everyone’s fingertips with a simple tweet. It’s totally free and works like a charm. This week a French 🇫🇷 publication featured it and brought a flurry of users across Europe to Smokey. This is where Twitter became a problem. Over the past 48+ hours, Twitter has been hiding Smokey’s tweets! The problem is that Twitter’s algorithm have “shadow-banned” (aka, muzzled) it, so people can no longer get tweet notifications from Smokey, nor can they see the SmokeyBot twitter account when they search for it. Twitter’s algorithms have effectively banned Smokey. Do you know anyone who works at Twitter? I need your help in getting this to them.
What is Smokey? What’s going on?
Smokey puts air quality data from 48 countries at your fingertips. You send a tweet like “#airairair delhi” and Smokey sends you a real-time air quality report in plain english.
You send a tweet:
Smokey replies within a few seconds:
That’s it. It’s as simple as that. You get a glimpse of Delhi’s air quality data in plain english. You send a simple tweet, and Smokey does all the heavy lifting. Smokey checks the official air quality sources in that city, it aggregates the data, compares it with the WHO standards, and how healthy/unhealthy the air is — along with emojis for health advisories.
You can tweet to try it for yourself:
☞ #airairair san francisco — That’s Twitter HQ.
☞ #airairair gurugram — Twitter’s India office
☞ #airairair statue of liberty — Lady liberty
☞ #airairair london — City fighting air pollution too.
☞ #airairair moscow — A famous Twitter user may want to know. ;)
☞ #airairair <insert city or neighborhood here> — Try it out.
(Obviously you likely won’t see a reply until Twitter fixes the problem.)
“C’mon twitter — You are a bird — I am a bird. Why can’t we get along?” — Smokey
Twitter Is The Perfect Platform For Smokey
I’m an avid twitter user. It’s the first app I open in the morning and the last thing I scroll through at night. As a user, I love it.
Twitter is the world’s largest cocktail party where there are zero degrees of separation. I love that. I have interacted with people, influencers and role models around the world because of it. The world is a much better place because Twitter exists. And it’s quite likely that you landed on this blog post when you saw a tweet about it.
“Air pollution a greater threat to humanity than HIV and Ebola.” -World Health Organization
Twitter is the world’s water cooler now. And people are talking about air pollution in increasing numbers. It makes perfect sense to allow people to monitor the air quality while they’re talking about it. Smokey does that really well.
I love Twitter. But I wake up every morning not knowing whether Smokey is still alive or not (“write permissions”) or whether my entire twitter account is visible or not (“muzzled”). :(
Twitter Banned Smokey Because It Was Popular?
Hear me out. It seems that the more successful a Twitter App becomes, the more likely it is that Twitter’s algorithms will wrongly flag it’s tweets as spam and effectively ban it.
Smokey works really well. It objectively puts real-time air quality data into every twitter user’s fingertips. That’s pretty badass, if I do say so myself. It works exactly how it should. It never spams anyone. It only replies to users when they ask for the air quality for a specific part of the world.
Right now, SmokeyBot doesn’t even appear in the search results. If you try to find the user, SmokeyBot, you likely won’t see it.
And the users around the world who are trying to get real-time air quality data in their city with Smokey are not getting notifications when Smokey replies to them. Smokey is still alive and replying diligently to anyone who talks to him. But, they’re not seeing Smokey’s replies at all and not getting a notification that they have been tweeted.
That’s a problem.
This Week Smokey Was Featured In France:
The video above brought a flurry of new users to Smokey and many of them spreading the word even further:
Problem #1: Write permissions denied.
Shortly after the French video story went live, Twitter rescinded Smokey’s ability to send any tweets at all. In Twitter’s words, Smokey is now “restricted from performing write actions.” Smokey could not reply to anyone. I scrambled to file a support ticket to Twitter — and to their credit, they acted swiftly to restore Smokey’s “write permissions” — so Smokey was back in business a few hours later.
But, there were several users who didn’t get a response to Smokey while it was down, so I recorded a video for them and tweeted to each one to apologize.
Problem #2: Twitter bans Smokey!
And around 48 hours ago, I abruptly found out my app has been “shadow banned” on Twitter. The first indication that something was horribly wrong was when I was talking to someone I just met about Smokey at Clean Air Asia’s Clean Air Knowledge Network workshop in New Delhi. They were intrigued by Smokey and pulled out their phone and searched for “Smokeybot” in twitter. And nothing. Smokey didn’t show up. As far as they could tell, Smokey did not exist.
That’s where we are right now. I reached out to Andy Piper (Developer Advocate)on Twitter who asked me to file a “policy” support ticket online. He’s always good at replying promptly. I did what he suggested and I’m waiting for a response!
In the meantime, I recorded another video for my users explaining to them why Smokey is not replying to them —
Dear Twitter, Please Do These Five Things —
I know you didn’t manually ban my app, but your algorithms did. Last year, you even suspended Jack’s (CEO) account for a while. That too was probably the algorithms messing up.
I understand that I’m taking a risk by building an app on someone else’s platform, because it opens me up to their whims and platform changes — but this just seems excessive. Why would you penalize/muzzle an app exactly when it’s doing really well? Smokey has had more delighted users this week than the rest of it’s life combined.
Here are the ideas:
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I love you. Please unmuzzle SmokeyBot.
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What can we do to fix our relationship status? Currently “it’s complicated.” My concern is that we’ll be in this same position two months from now when a larger more international publication writes about Smokey. I’d love it if we can prevent Smokey from being muzzled again somehow. Can you white-list the Smokey app and account?
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Once we have resolved this issue, I invite you to take advantage of Smokey to track the real-time air quality data around the world.
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Suggestion: Add a “app muzzled” ticket on the support website. Because right now, I can’t file a ticket to get this in front of someone at Twitter, except in the vague “twitter policies” section.
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You can make it up to Smokey and me by verifying our accounts. ;)
This past week has been a rollercoaster. I’ve been ecstatic that a major French video platform featured Smokey and loved tweeting back and forth with all my new users — but also flipped a few tables when I felt I’d been kicked below the belt by the very platform my app is built upon.
I hate that I love you so much. Please Make Twitter Great Again.
Cheers,
-Amrit and Smokey
P.S. We still love you.
Still not convinced? Hear it from the users:
Smokey gets a lot of love on Twitter — from air quality scientists, science journalists, students, parents, frequent travelers and so many others.
That’s Dr. Jessica McCarty, air quality scientist and soon-to-be Assistant Professor at Miami University:
I’ve never been to Lille in France, but Smokey is helping people monitor air quality there too!
Air quality consultant in Bangalore:
French journalist checking air quality in Graz, Austria:
Christa Hasenkopf, air quality scientist and Founder/CEO of @OpenAQ:
Consultant at World Bank:
Science journalist:
Software Developer in New Delhi:
Dr. Pallavi Pant from the University of Massachusetts Amherst:
Founder/CEO of BotList — the appstore for bots:
... and the list goes on.
Written by: I am Amrit Sharma, the founder of AirAirAir.org . I believe that clean air is a basic human right. Please don’t make my mission to Make Air Quality Great Again any more challenging with these technical snafus than it already is. Thank you!“C’mon twitter — You are a bird — I am a bird. Why can’t we get along?” — Smokey