http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/7568918

Today Ray Slakinski was kicked off of Twitter (here he is in my house explaining what happened). He doesn’t know why. He was on Twitter since 2006 at http://twitter.com/rays .

This is reprehensible on Twitter’s part for three reasons.

1. He never got an email or other notification that Twitter was taking down the account.
2. He begged to Twitter, but got an automated reply back with no details as to when he’d get an answer.
3. He has gotten Twitter’s death sentence, but unlike if you get sentenced to death at San Quentin there is no appeals process. You don’t know why you are guilty and there’s no committee or intermediary you can appeal your death sentence to.

This is an outrageous amount of power to give any company.

Twitter and Facebook both do this and it is simply outrageous.

If there’s a case for government intervention in our industry this is it, not privacy.

Privacy is small potatoes compared to how these companies throw around their power.

UPDATE: RayS says he just got email from Twitter saying his account was suspended because it looked like he was trying to sell his name. He assures me he was not trying to sell his account. He said he joked a while ago after a baseball game about doing that, but it was just a joke. He’s had his account since 2006 and isn’t likely to sell his account.

@Delbius, at Twitter, answered:

@Scobleizer There was no appearance of any sort of joke and it’s a stated violation of the rules. He can respond to the tickets that I personally answered — not auto-responded to — if he’d like to argue his case. Thanks.

MY ANSWER TO DELBIUS and TWITTER: OK, but it is still OUTRAGEOUS that you give people a death sentence without sending them an email detailing what they did wrong and what they can do about it. They also have no appeals process. Ray says he’s not guilty. You say he is. In human life we have differences of opinions and we need to have a way to appeal these decisions or else you’ll piss someone off enough that they get government intervention. I really really despise how both Twitter and Facebook deal with people here. I get questions from my readers every day about death sentences on both services. GET A BETTER PROCESS!

UPDATE2: Ray’s account is now back up. But the process still sucks.