By Aaron Miller-
Data scientist, Geoff Golberg has launched a suit against Twitter seeking up to $50,000 in damages, an injunction to reinstate his Twitter account, and return access to his account data. He also wants the judge to “prohibit Twitter from arbitrarily terminating the accounts of New York users with no cause.”
He claims that Twitter and fake Twitter accounts were ultimately responsible for driving Golberg off the platform, when his account was banned in July 2019. He had been in the process of researching automated manipulation on the giant social network, especially manipulation done using bots and inauthentic accounts.
He argues that twitter acted on reports against him received from bot accounts. Golberg also insinuated hypocrisy against Twitter, arguing that they were not willing to act when he reported accounts doxxing him and calling for his murder. Instead, he said they have suspended my account for calling someone a ‘moron’ (an account which continues to game Twitter’s platform, no less),” he said last July.
The lawsuit also accuses Twitter of violating contracts it has with its users. Having invested over $38k in adverts on twitter’s platform, the data scientist also argues that twitter has a business relationship with him which was breached when his account was terminated.
Goldberg also insists that Twitter accounts are not free, arguing that twitter translates user data to money. He said : “User data is the currency that all users provide to Twitter for access, and it becomes a valuable asset that Twitter then sells to platform advertisers.
While Twitter doesn’t ask users for money as they sign up – “the service does rely upon user data in order to sell and deploy targeted advertising for which it earns substantial revenue,” the filing states, specifying that this revenue reaches billions of dollars every year.
Golberg’s work focused on various topics and was available to Twitter to use to clean up the platform from deceptive and manipulative behaviour like astroturfing, which pretends to be proving legitimate support for a product, service, or social or political cause, but is in fact deceptively pushing public opinion in their favour. One of the topics of Golberg’s research was the cryptocurrency “XRP Army”: and Golberg in late 2018 found that some 8,000 Twitter accounts were potentially XRP bots.