Dear @elonmusk : I am, in fact a real person

The proof is that unlike a robot, I will only try to prove it for so long.

In July 2020, my twitter account was suspended.

Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules: https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311.

If you search that linked page, there is no “autom” on it, so the rule itself would seem to not be expanded upon, despite the link’s inclusion in the email. This was pre-Musk buyout and more likely my anti-left leaning content.

If I wanted my account back, I could give them my mobile number, get a code, yadda yadda.

I am an anonymous account, as much as I can be. I am not interested in having the police investigate and arrest me for social media wrongthink. So that’s a no from me.

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In January 2021, my account was unsuspended, magically, but I still needed to provide a mobile number to log in and use Twitter and had no interest in that.

Instead, I would read twitter accounts by bookmarking them and loading them individually to catch up on things without logging in.

That’s now changed as companies are scraping the content and that’s BAD so you can no longer read content without logging in. So I logged in.

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Now, instead of providing a mobile number (or perhaps as well as…), I need to “prove I am a real person.”

Alrighty then, let’s go.

All you have to do is match the rolled dice picture on the right to the number on the left.

My first observation here is that “submit” is the original default form button text for submitting HTML forms. This is an anchor though, not a button, and the implied “you must submit to the robot / twitter gods” did not go unnoticed. Very droll, Elon.

Anyway, I muddled my way through and the little progress popup after each click of the SUBMIT button climbed from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 of 5 slots in the UI. At 5, however, the following screen appeared:

Wait, what? I got one wrong? Ummm ok… So I did it again. With the same result. Weird, am I really that unco at maths?

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Keen to see where I was going wrong, the next time I tried the test, I took a screen shot every time before hitting SUBMIT. I wanted evidence of where I was going wrong.

Progress popup: 1 of 5

Progress popup: 2 of 5

Progress popup: 3 of 5

Progress popup: 4 of 5

This is it! I thought. Hit SUBMIT one last time and I can resume my Twitter catchups. Woo!

Hit SUBMIT.

Progress popup: 5 of 15

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I hate to make an assumption here, but IMO, any thinking, rational human is going to look at that misleading 4 of 5 progress popup morphing to 5 of 15 and tell @elonmusk to go take a 15m walk of a 5m pier.

Ironically, given the utter cluelssness of bots these days, that’s the only thing that would continue to answer these inane “prove you are a real person” questions.

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Don’t get suspended from Twitter. The way back is murky, and filled with stupid.