BTO Blues.

The British Trust for Ornithology is a charitable organisation which studies bird behaviour and numbers as part of the conservation effort. Much of their communication with volunteers is done via Twitter, and so it was of much concern when their Twitter account was suspended recently with no reason given.

They tried to find out what the reason was, but could get no further than an automated response which said that the suspension would be investigated. They weren’t able to speak to a real person, which is what happens when the interface between supplier and user is left to the mercy of technology.

And so they reviewed their Twitter communications in order to attempt some explanation for themselves, but all they came up with was the fact that they’d recently mentioned a bird called the Woodcock. They thought it possible that Twitter’s algorithms had misinterpreted the word – presumably because their lexicon of bird species was inadequate – and been scandalised to the point of suffering hot flushes, the result being that the air was rent with much panic-stricken wailing and the sibilant whistle of the headsman’s axe. (This is what happens, of course, when the making of decisions is left to technology instead of human beings. Human beings are far from infallible, but at least they can be argued with.)

I gather the account has now been restored, although as far as I know they’re still in the dark regarding why it was suspended in the first place. And this is a worry because the whole saga is likely happen again as soon as they mention the Great Tit.