Twitter Locks Devin Nunes' Account After Log-In Flub

Social media site says someone who tried to log on to Nunes' account failed anti-spam puzzle
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 10, 2021 1:37 PM CST
Devin Nunes Locked Out of Twitter 'in Error'
Rep. Devin Nunes gives his closing remarks before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 21, 2019, during a public impeachment hearing of then-President Trump's efforts to tie US aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

For a short while this week, Twitter thought Devin Nunes wasn't human—a mistake it has since remedied. The New York Post reports that the California congressman or someone on his staff tried to log on to his Twitter account, but the person attempting the sign-in wasn't able to first get past the reCAPTCHA spam filter, which asks users to prove they're not bots by identifying certain pictures out of a bunch. The account was subsequently locked after the person didn't complete the task correctly.

Twitter has since stepped in to release Nunes from Twitter jail. "Our automated systems took enforcement action on the account in error and it has since been reversed," a Twitter rep tells Business Insider. "The enforcement action was taken as a result of the account's failure to complete an anti-spam challenge that we regularly deploy across the service." Insider notes the courts last year threw out a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter in which Nunes claimed the platform was liable for unflattering tweets about him from two anonymous parody accounts. (More Devin Nunes stories.)

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