Slashdot Mirror
Tweeter To Be Prosecuted, Twitter Now Censoring?
Andy Smith writes "Slashdot has already covered the super-injunctions furore in the UK, with one famous footballer going after an anonymous Twitter user who broke a court order and revealed his extra-marital affair. Now another footballer has asked the attorney general to prosecute a well-known journalist and TV personality, who went against another super-injunction and wrote about this footballer, again on Twitter. Meanwhile, going back to the first footballer, it looks like he's got Twitter running scared, as the site is apparently blocking his name from appearing on the trend list, despite him being one of the most tweeted-about people."
why would ryan giggs do such a thing?
Just heard former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas has got a secret singing career.
Apparently she's been doing gigs in Manchester for ages.
You can't do something wrong and then cry to the judge to silence everyone.
Names dammit! It's hard to keep track of who's doing what without names. I know about Giggs so who exactly is the "another" player here?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Are you telling me that cheap gossip like extra-marital affairs of pro footballers will have to be leaked through wikileaks in the future?
Ryan Giggs, its ryan giggs, its the welshman Ryan Giggs. - Just incase anyone was wondering.
The solution appears to be simply to remove all reference to the individual. He wishes privacy - let him have it - though perhaps a list of such "black hole" names should be published - to explain the mysterious absence of all reference to the individual - and to protect the 'innocent' of course..
trending.
They stopped wikileaks from trending a while back too
Twitter has been censoring and controlling the Trending Topics for like a year or more now. When they feel like something is advertising, even if by a group of fans, they block it. If they feel like something is controversial, they block it. TT being censored is nothing new or news-worthy if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention.
And probably the anonymous Twitter user being targeted is not a member of the press (at which the injunction is aimed).
Similar to the trend list thing, here's another case of apparent censorship under fear. A newspaper identified one of the footballers, and that issue of the paper is missing from the online newsagent PressDisplay, even though PressDisplay is based in Canada, supposedly outside the reach of UK courts.
http://www.meejahor.com/2011/05/22/paper-identifies-injunction-footballer-scares-online-newsagent/
The algorithm that twitter use favours novelty tweets over mass tweets. For my location Ryan Giggs is still trending whilst it has stopped elsewhere. There was an explanation of this after people accused twitter of censoring cablegate and wikileaks.
So: TD;DR Twitter are NOT censoring Giggs, its just their algorithm doing what it does.
For those overpaid athletes: Don't want people tweeting about your affairs? Don't step out on your spouse. It's plain and simple. If they insist on being able to cheat on their wives then they should retire and leave the limelight so nobody will care.
Their fame naturally reduces their ability to live a private life. But they don't have to live that life, they could get a regular job and disappear into the crowd.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Isn't he gay?
First, of course, removing something from the trend list is not censorship. It's a top ten type list, not the content itself.
Second, there have been complaints about the twitter trend list for a long time. The trend list has never seemed to be just a numerical ranking of tweets - I don't regard it as any more reliable than a Slashdot poll. Whatever they are doing here is probably not new.
I have also heard rumors that the trend list is particularized for the viewer (i.e., we don't all see the same trend lists), probably on a geographic basis. I wonder if people in the UK can see trends for He Who Must Not Be Named ?
It also might be due to copyright. PressDisplay would need a license from the newspaper to distribute it online wouldn't they? And the newspaper presumably couldn't license and distribute something that's been barred by a court order, could they?
Still bad though.
This gag order thing is going to make Ryan Giggs look far worse than whatever it is he's been doing without his wife's knowledge.
I can't find any Windows 98 drivers for my computer either. I thought Twitter might work, since Google has become so useless. Microsoft is obviously up to something..There's just no hope of sustaining a truly free internet
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Let's face it people, once you choose to put your information in the "cloud", it's out there... you should not be surprised that at some point it will come back to hunt you. I wrote more about this on my blog {shameless self promotion} here http://goo.gl/tCWZ9
Why would Twitter censor a trending topic and do not censor tweets?
An explanation is easy: The trending topics are not simply the most tweeted-about people, the Twitter algorithm takes several factors in account. E.g. If someone has already been trending topic sometimes it gets harder for him to reappear. And I guess football stars in UK are familiar topics on Twitter.
Someone /. doesn't care about: Free speech trumps privacy /. does care about: Privacy trumps free speech
Someone
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
FTA: However, he (Lord Neuberger) warned that modern technology was "totally out of control" and society should consider other ways to bring Twitter and other websites under control.
Personally, I think Lord Neuberger and those like him are the ones that need to be brought under control.
[End Of Line]
It's those roundish balls made of triangles and stuff. Also known as "wussy-ball".
Like my dear brother said: If you don't want something to appear on Twitter/Facebook - Don't do it.
Under what great mystical process can any government claim that an adulterer can not be publicly pointed to as an adulterer? Freedom involves a willingness to allow exposure of the worst parts of all of us. The basic notion of promoting the best of us while limiting the success of the worst of us needs to run its natural course. In the old days a man could challenge another man and the rightness was established by the strongest in lethal combat. The realization that great people and strong muscles do not mean superiority changed that. It was replaced by the notion that passing certain tests and standards determined the most worthy of us. One such test involves honesty and another loyalty. In 1890 an adulterer would have huge struggle finding work. After all if he will cheat and lie to his own wife what will he do to others with whom he has even weaker bonds than marriage?
If it is him I can say it all I like, I'm in Scotland and the order doesn't apply here.
freedom=entropy
For gossip-mongers: Get a life of your own.
UK courts issued injunctions to prevent the press from revealing damaging evidence about famous people. Namely: Alan Shearer (caught having affair with Gabby Logan), Ewan McGregor (caught with a prostitute), and Ryan Giggs (caught having affair with Imogen Thomas). I posted this because the UK judge who issued the Giggs injunction called it an "injunction against the world". Meaning that, due to his feeble understanding of international law, he believes that somehow he has authority over my actions. He also, apparently, thinks that I could be held criminally and civilly liable for revealing this information. So, this entire post is just my way of saying, "Hey, go fuck yourself" to that judge. One judge cannot, despite his best efforts, censor the internet. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Censoring the press is a scary proposition, even when it's done for all the right reasons. (ie. protection of a witness, to ensure a fair trial, or to protect national security). But to issue a "gag order" against the press to protect the wealthy and famous from embarrassment is a very small step away from corruption. If the judges will issue an injunction for these matters, how long will it be before the politicians start using the courts to suppress their opposition?
instead of returning a twitter page in the UK, return a page that explicitly list everyone involved in the case (judges and all), why and the post the legal documents. i wonder how fast they will change their mind on this censorship bullshit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Since when is Slashdot UK based?
then tell me: WHO ARE THESE FOOTBALLERS????
(and who did they frell?)
Privacy is terrorism.
Don't worry. It's probably just over at the Ministry of Truth being "cleaned up" before being put online.
Usually people who get their panties in such a knot over personal scandals being revealed to the general public have a few skeletons in the closet.
Who wants to put money on the thought that maybe Lord Neuberger has more than a few "kinks" of his own. I wonder if he likes to dress up like a schoolgirl and get his ass paddled by a dominatrix.
Tisha Hayes
Nope. It's because of how the twitter trending algorithm works. They don't allow the same topics to continually trend, otherwise Justin Bieber would be almost all the top trends all the time. This was explained to me by my pro-wikileaks friend even before the wikileaks fiasco occurred and who also happens to work for twitter. He also re-explained this to me during the whole wikileaks mess. This is also the explanation twitter gave.
Everyone, can we please move on from this conspiracy theory?
....is measured by increase of mentions, not number of mentions. Giggs' mentions may be high, but the number isn't increasing as much as it was just after the story broke. Less *increase* in mentions = lower-ranked on the trending lists. The number of mentions has likely peaked.
...because neither footballer's name show up in the post.
I've had three posts on the BBC's 606 sports forum removed today for mentioning the name of the unspoken one. In one of my posts, I named him as "the player we cannot mention" and that was removed too.
How am I, Joe Public, meant to know which football player the story is about? I could list all 800 English Premier League players and be breaking the law. It's unbelievably illogical. If I, a minion of the almighty government, had access to the court injunction, I could refrain from guessing names and I would stop talking about them.
Or the government could start policing my internet thoughts...
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
What do Ryan Giggs and Gareth Barry have in common?
Sorry, not allowed to say...
And the parody's start
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdO8lxHoUBw
How am I, Joe Public, meant to know which football player the story is about? I could list all 800 English Premier League players and be breaking the law.
You're only breaking the law if you know at the time you publish it that the information is illegal to publish. Assuming you really don't know the identity of the footballers in question, you cannot break the law by speculating, because you also obviously would not know what the injunction prevents. You can't break a court order if you don't know of the order's existence...
Except they didn't.
This comes up every time a big story doesn't trend, and every time it comes down to people not understanding how the trend algorithm works. It's not done by volume of tweets: it's down to velocity, rate of increase in speed of mentions.
Simple illustration: something that gets, say 50 tweets per second consistent over several hours won't trend. However, something that shows a sharp increase - say from nothing to 50 tweets in a few minutes - would trend. And, in order to stay as a trend, it would have to increase further, faster.
It's not rocket science, and it's not secret - Twitter have posted about how the algorithm works a couple of times.
To pass this information on to as many people as possible.
Human rights and freedom of speech are not abstract concepts that apply only to lawmakers.
All government bodies must be constrained by the rights of the people, including courts.
A court "ordering" the public to not publish a fact is contrary to the basic idea of freedom. Everyone should fight this threat to freedom, tooth and nail.
As my late mother use to say, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." She also said that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks, and a whole shitload of other cliche's. Now I don't care one way or the other about some British nobody that can't keep his tool for his wife only, but one sure fire way to ensure that someone will do something is to tell them that they can't do it.