How being hacked on Twitter saved my sanity

I knew something was up the moment I tried to log on.

Password not recognised, it said. I tried to change the password. This email address is not recognised, it came back.

Then a scour of the unhelpful “help page”, and the dispatch of a message to Twitter telling it I could not access my account.

I joined Twitter in January 2010, and 24,000 tweets later, this was the first time I’d been locked out of my account, or hacked. When I joined, it felt like a terrific resource for a journalist and provided the ability to read all sorts of stuff one would never normally come across.

It also seemed like a good place for crowdsourcing.

When I was based in India, I often sought answers or sources online and frequently received useful information.

And while I have only a modest number of followers, it has also served as a means of reassuring people who might not want to talk to a reporter that one was legitimate. “Look, there’s even a blue tick next to my picture,” you can say.

It was alarming, therefore, when I saw that face had disappeared, and for several days some writing in a strange script appeared beneath my bio.

An automated email message from Twitter claimed the company was investigating the matter.

Several days passed, and I remained unable to log on. I sent another message and received another automated response.

At first, it was frustrating not being able to scroll through my timeline. Lots of journalists will tell you that Twitter remains a great way of keeping up with breaking news.

Yet as time passed, I found myself missing it less and less.

Yes, it was initially disconcerting to feel left out of what was going on. Similarly, it was a little annoying that I was unable to post links to recently published news stories and so forth.

But it also meant I was not obliged to read every predictable comment and online spat about every topic under the sun, whether it was Boris Johnson’s latest announcement concerning the lockdown in Britain or criticism of Kamala Harris.

It was, in short, a mental cleanse.

And I also soon realised that my phone buzzed frequently enough with notifications from the few trusted news sources I subscribe to when there was, indeed, true breaking news.

What does all of this mean?

Certainly it means Twitter is not doing a particularly good job at dealing with something it claims to take seriously.

It also means that if it ever does sort out the issue, I ought to spend less time on Twitter, a platform that these days feels much less useful as a source of information and much more like a place where many people spend their time shouting at one another.

Perhaps, too, I need to freshen up the pool of people I follow: if all of it just feels like noise, then there really is little point.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the peace and quiet.

Yours,

Andrew Buncombe

Chief US correspondent

PS Sorry, you can’t check me out on Twitter