How Will You React To Twitter's Regional Censorship Plan?

Despite (and probably partly because of) its much-touted role as a communications link in the Arab Spring protest movements of the last year, Twitter announced a few days ago that it could be (which I take to mean "will be, and probably are") selectively blocking tweets based on local governments' requests. This AP story (as carried by stuff.co.nz) gives an overview of the negative reaction this move has drawn; unsurprisingly, there's talk of a boycott. The EFF has what seems to be a fair look at the reality of Twitter take-downs, noting that for various reasons they remove certain content already, but not as much as some parties would like; VentureBeat looks at the thousands of take-down notices the company received last year. If you use Twitter, does the recently announced region-specific blocking change what you'll use it for?

Comments

I won't

[Pete Venkman]

I won't react.

Re:I won't

[jhoegl]

I will, by continuing to not have a twitter account or pay attention to tweets

Re:I won't

[TheGratefulNet]

twitter and facebook remind me SO MUCH of the cb craze in the 70's.

you could spot the unintelligent ones easily. they 'liked' cb.

today, the fools 'like' fb and twit.

its always handy to have a 'fools identification' device of some kind or another, isn't it?

on topic: I'll be happy to see those services (that are centrally controlled and owned by ONE COMPANY (each) fail due to people not wanting to deal with censorship. I really miss the old days where the USENET model was popular. you know, not one single company owning it, not one single place to spy on people, not one single place to filter what the people want to say and see and hear. then, web-based this and that came into playing and websites are owned by single entities, not 'the people'. that was the start of the end of net.freedom.

I hope fb and T die. they are not really freedom based, are they? we used to have mass communication tools that were truly freedom based. mabye we can revisit them again, in some other way?

if a single company or group is behind it, its bad. yes, including the beloved google, too.

Re:I won't

[vlm]

On the other hand, the so called social media craze (I'm including in that the full spectrum, from twitter, to myspace) seems quite more widespread than the cb on the 70's.

The numbers are much smaller than CB. Here's an interesting article.

http://billcrosby.com/socialmedia/how-many-twitter-users-are-there-really-graph/

Depending on how you interpret the data, around 1 in 50 americans actually use twitter. At one point in the 70s, darn near 1 in 10 cars had a CB radio installed.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Most people have nothing to say, and are not interested in passively listening to others. Also its exceedingly circular, its not a surprise that most of the people you personally hang out with are into social media if you define the persons you hang out with as people who are into social media... This is the "everyone is a trekkie" effect where all the trekkies hang out together believing the entire world is trekkies because everyone they know is a trekkie.

Re:I won't

[RJFerret]

Twitter lost me when they ruined their search capability.

Google+ easily replaced it, more convenient than Twitter, Email, video conferencing beats telephone, etc.

But the CB analogy doesn't hold water, as Google+ replaced email/phone for many people I interact with, they are non-technical, so find it more convenient. Meanwhile my technical friends appreciate it too, given the control and ease they have with the tool.

The only frustrating part, telephones used to be ubiquitous. Nowadays, some people never check voicemail, some people never answer the phone but rely on voicemails; some people expect texts, some never text; some email, some consider email old-school/too formal; some use Twitter, some use Google+ (thankfully nobody in my varied social circles used Facebook)--to contact anyone requires not just knowing their number/address/handle/whatever, but also knowing what their preferred communication medium is!

Re:I won't

[Anonymous Coward]

Herpderp.

I "like" facebook because it got me in contact with a friend that I hadn't spoken to since I left england when I was in the 6th grade.

I "like" facebook because some of my friends, including my significant other, make funny posts or post funny pictures.

I "like" facebook because with my busy personal life, where I have *maybe* 2 1/2 days of free time to myself per week, I can easily keep up with my friends and they don't have to feel rushed or pressured to talk to me right away.

Nothing that I put up on FB is anything that I'm worried about hiding. Besides, if someone of any relative importance wants to find out something about me, they will. Do you honestly think you're invisible? You fall under the same rules that I do.

Re:I won't

[betterunixthanunix]

I am neither on Twitter nor on Facebook, and...

1. I have a girlfriend
2. I am routinely invited to parties
3. I have friends who share various interests with me
4. I talk to my friends, family, girlfriend, acquaintances, etc.

So what was that about people with social lives? Where I am from, one's social life is not defined by some website's list of followers, friends, freaks, or whatever else.

Re:I won't

[betterunixthanunix]

This is a false dichotomy. Some people actually speak to their friends face to face, or using the email system, IM system, telephone system, etc. You do not need a service or a system at all, just need a functional mouth and air (or to be fair to deaf or mute people, functional hands).

Re:I won't

[Dhalka226]

its always handy to have a 'fools identification' device of some kind or another, isn't it?

Yes. For example, I have had much success identifying self-important twats with superiority compelxes by their incessant need to talk about how much smarter they are than anybody who uses Facebook or Twitter.

Re:I won't

[DoninIN]

You needed a CB radio, something you could not use for anything else. Most CB's were installed in cars. Base units cost more, as did hand held models. Buying a model for a car and using it in the home? Possible, but not for the average person. Twitter? All you need is a phone or a computer -- something many people already have. The "entry" into Twitter is cheaper/easier, which is why it might be more widespread, but I think the comparison is valid.

Except for the fact that in some very real ways the CB radio was actually useful. Useful primarily for finding out where the police were on the interstate, so you wouldn't get a ticket for going over the new, and much hated 55 mph speed limit, useful for calling for help traveling or talking to your buddies following you in the next car. Weather and road conditions passed from truckers and motorists etc. They certainly created and highlighted a subculture many of us would like to think of as unintelligent and coarse, that is truckers, truck stop folks and the very rural, but CB communications was also very practical. No one has tweeted to me that there was a speed trap around the bend.

Re:I won't

[Blue Stone]

I'll react. I'll be quite pleased. Because it won't work.

Any censored Tweet will be retweeted, both through Twitter's atuto-retweet function and manually. If Twitter censor auto-re-tweets, then 'fine'. But they won't be able to censor manual re-tweets.

All it will take is for someone in a censored country to mention that they can't see a certain tweet, and someone in a non-censored country can manually re-tweet it.

The censoring country's courts would then have to apply for each re-tweet or subsequent Tweet mentioning the same information to be censored.

All this will do will raise the profile of the censorship taking place and raise awareness in the censorees that they are being controlled by those doing the censoring.

And that will influence those being controlled to become more active in the defense of the freedoms. All-in-all, a good outcome.

Their "common carrier" status

[nurb432]

Is now out the window. Expect tons of lawsuits due to content posted/saved/viewed. They will now be liable for the content to, not just the end users.

Not a good status to lose, with the upcoming legislation like SOPA..

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[countertrolling]

They would be held liable regardless.. It was a business decision based on the advice of bean counters and lawyers. However those who don't react negatively to censorship of any kind will obviously approve of this.

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[Mistlefoot]

"common carrier" status is an internal (as in inside the country) concept.

Common carrier often prevent content from reaching beyond the countries borders.

Anyone who lives in Canada sees this all the time with big US providers blocking content to Canada. And the reverse is true as well, where Canada prevents (or tries) certain content from getting in.

Twitter blocking content sent to Canada would not be much different then US superbowl ads being blocked from coming into Canada on the cable/satellite feeds. That it's done for copyright reasons over whatever reasons is not Twitter's issue. That they may choose to try to attempt to obey the laws of the countries they are blocking tweets to (at least I would gather this is why they would be blocking any tweets) has little to do with "common carrier" status.

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[mounthood]

Is now out the window. Expect tons of lawsuits due to content posted/saved/viewed. They will now be liable for the content to, not just the end users.

Not a good status to lose, with the upcoming legislation like SOPA..

Appeasing governments will make Twitter less vulnerable to legal issues. Governments will now like Twitter rather than fear it, and have incentive to protect and promote it rather then other ways of communicating on the internet. This is an economic move, buying corporate stability at the expense of the users. RIM, Microsoft, Cisco and many other companies have followed this same strategy of appeasing governments at the expense of users.

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who lives in Canada sees this all the time with big US providers blocking content to Canada. And the reverse is true as well, where Canada prevents (or tries) certain content from getting in.

Then why can't Canada do something useful for once and block things like Justin Bieber, Bryan Adams and Celine Dion from getting into this country.

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[Mistlefoot]

To add to my above post:

If I ship a bag of weed via purolator courier, purolator has no idea what it is and it is protected. Purolator is not expected, and should not ever, be opening my package to see what it is. When purolator reaches the border, purolator would, as a common carrier, not be able to DEMAND that the package not be opened or checked or what not.

But the grand parent suggests that if purolator allowed the border to stop the package, they would lose common carrier status and that simply is incredibly speculative.

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[MightyMartian]

Still, the decision is baffling. Twitter got huge amounts of good publicity during the Arab Spring, and now they've decided they'll censor based on country? WTF?

Re:Their "common carrier" status

[countertrolling]

They might get caught stepping on the wrong toes. They are following orders. They are too valuable as a propaganda tool to just allow to run wild. And "Arab Spring" is about as real as Arab Unicorns.

Don't know.

[An Ominous Coward]

I'll probably go with "continue to not use twitter".

Re:Don't know.

[Seumas]

Yeah, since I'm neither a twelve year old girl nor a "professional blogger", I'll probably just continue to not use the shitty service. They can do what they like with it and those who don't like the changes will maybe get a clue and move on to something less fucking inane.

That's a great idea!

[Weaselmancer]

Now that they are saying they are willing and able to police every message that goes through their system, they are now responsible for content. Lawyers everywhere rejoice.

So now if anyone tweets anything illegal or uses twitter in the process of committing a crime, Twitter opens itself up to legal repercussions. If they can censor some stuff, they should be able to censor other stuff too. Failure to do so under our legal system could be actionable.

So long, Twitter. We hardly knew ye.

This makes my opinion on Twitter even worse

[jperl]

Another reason for me to continue my boycott. To be honest, the only way Twitter makes sense for me is sort of real time support to questions I ask to a company. Apart from that I simply cannot see real benefit for my life.

Orgy of stupidity

[vandoravp]

It seems as though nobody who is reacting to what Twitter has stated actually read or thought about the new policy, instead parading headlines like “Social Suicide”. It's easily the most subversive and transparent approach to censorship to date. They are already obliged by law to remove content in various countries, and have done so. The alternative is complete blocking of the service by the country. Until now, complying required removing content globally. What Twitter has done is made it possible to only remove content in the country that requested the block (reactively, like DMCA takedowns), while still leaving it visible to the rest of the world.

Now countries with screwball notions of free speech cannot affect beyond their borders. Also, those *inside* the country will be notified that they are seeing blocked content, instead of just an absence, and the censoring will be documented on Chilling Effects. Before, if content were censored, it would be impossible to see it no matter where you are, or where you pretended to be. Now, people's voices can still get out, the oppression of their voices will be more apparent, and it's still possible to get around the censorship if necessary.

Re:This will only affect 1% of Twitter...

[Ethanol-fueled]

We can expect the tweets like,"Just got harassed by random homeland security checkpoint" or " Police brutality" to be promptly disappeared.

Bullshit

[pavon]

Now that they are saying they are willing and able to police every message that goes through their system

They never said that. They said that if they are asked to take material down, they can now do so on a country-by-country basis rather than globally. Does removing content due to a DMCA request cause you to loose "common carrier status"? No, it is necessary to preserve it! Does removing neo-Nazi material in Germany when it is pointed out cause you to loose "common carrier status". No! All this talk about Twitter opening itself up to liability simply by complying with the law is completely unfounded and ignorant of the law.

If you operate in a country you are required to abide by their laws. Google and all the other major search engines have been blocking content for years. Twitter is doing so in a manner that does not affect people outside of that country, which draws attention to the fact that censorship is taking place, and allows for an easy work-around (proxies) to access the information which has been blocked. It is the best possible implementation they could have chosen which still complies with the law.

Re:Par for the course

[houghi]

Because you don't use twitter this does not concern you?

        First they came for the communists,
        and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

        Then they came for the trade unionists,
        and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

        Then they came for the Jews,
        and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

        Then they came for the Catholics,
        and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

        Then they came for me
        and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Re:This will only affect 1% of Twitter...

[geekmux]

We can expect the tweets like,"Just got harassed by random homeland security checkpoint" or " Police brutality" to be promptly disappeared.

And much like humans have been doing for thousands of years, we can expect users to adjust to such activity and obfuscate their topics through various methods.

Siri might be good, but no way in hell is she a match for the human mind. It is still the most powerful computer.

I'm not a twit either

[Megane]

I'm not a Twitting Twat, so I can't care about this. Nor am I a Farcebooker.

In fact, I detest the trend of every website to have these obnoxious pop-up "friend" and "share" buttons that go to there and a few other lame hipster sites, such as Redduuhh. When /. added that a few weeks ago, I promptly added the icons image to my AdBlock, though the cursor still changes over that area. (Of course all of sharethis.com was already in my AdBlock.)

Re:Jurisdiction?

[vandoravp]

Correct. The EFF article points out that Twitter's locations are “United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany”, in addition to the United States (the “various countries” I was referring to). They are only obligated to act on legal requests inside those countries. This policy allows Twitter to expand its physical presence, without having to then deal with a convoluted mess of free speech laws that are different in each of those countries. And it's not limited to government requests. The bulk of what Twitter takes down has been DMCA-based.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[betterunixthanunix]

This policy allows Twitter to expand its physical presence

...which is necessary because...? Again, the Internet should obviate any need for Twitter to have servers or operations in countries whose laws would require them to censor their users.

Twitter will be replaced

[mounthood]

Twitter will be replaced with something that has security built-in and fundamental to its nature. Message signing, sequence integrity, and a distributed hosting system are the obvious next steps.

Security needs to be designed in at the start. Changing any type of communication after its widespread adoption to be more secure against censorship and offer (more of) the protections of anonymity has proved difficult. Securing email hasn't worked. HTTP was supplemented with a separate protocol rather then having security added. Phones moved from analog to digital but didn't adopt encryption. DNSSEC is an exception that proves the rule.

Change from Twitter to a new system might take a long time due to the network effect, but people want free speech and the option of anonymity, so it's inevitable.

I guess I'm the opposite

[SteveFoerster]

I think we're in a battle for the heart and soul of the Internet, and that Twitter just announced they're on the bad guys' side. So my response was to delete my Twitter account, tell the company why I did so in their contact us form, and blog about it.

Why?

[denzacar]

Why would older adults' social interactions differ from younger adults'?

It is explained in detail here, here and here.

Or if you don't have the time for all that, this basically sums it up.