Happy birthday — your account is suspended! Mighty Writers isn’t allowed to tweet

A profile change from Mighty Writers celebrating the nonprofit’s 10-year anniversary has gotten it a suspension on Twitter.

Not, mind you, because of any opinion or view expressed but because Twitter doesn’t allow individuals under the age of 13 to use the platform, and whatever algorithm hunts down malefactors couldn’t distinguish between the profile of an individual and an organization.

Happy birthday to our friends at @MightyWriters – who (we’ve heard) are ✋🏽🤚🏽 many years old now. 😂#HappyBirthday #FreeMightyWriters @TimWhitaker30 pic.twitter.com/ehf8q1TvNv

— Tree House Books (@TreeHouse_Books) May 24, 2019

“”It wasn’t a tweet,” Mighty Writers executive director Tim Whitaker told Generocity via email. “We fine-tuned our profile and mentioned that we (MW) was about to have our 10th birthday. Twitter’s algorithm read that as the account was being run by a 10 year old.”

Mighty Writers is a nonprofit that helps children across Philadelphia become better writers, and has a lot of fans in Philadelphia. Many of them have been rallying to the organization’s support on Twitter itself. A “Free Mighty Writers” image and tweet created by @PennMindCORE has been gaining traction since the suspension went public.

https://twitter.com/PennMindCORE/status/1131259255875489794

But Twitter hasn’t budged.

“We’re into our third week of getting no response from Twitter,” Whitaker said. “It’s stunning to us that we have so many people — staffers, followers, city reps — all trying to get our Twitter account up again and nothing’s working. Maybe we’re buried under all the hate speech they have to deal with?”