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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.