Comments on: Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter

By: KSager

KSager — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:21:11 +0000

RE: #URLburning on Twitter

Hi Paul, I have been experiencing a form of censorship on Twitter that I nickname “URL burning.” Basically, Twitter appears to blacklist a URL so that if two tweets are identical except for a URL, the URL tweet gets killed from a hashtag stream if it contains the blacklisted URL and is tweeted by the censored user’s account. You can visit the hashtag #URLburning to see a little more about it. It is very easily replicable. Anybody’s guess whether Twitter is using programs or people to blacklist URLs, but the behaviour is very very clear and easy to duplicate.

This can kill a fledgling tweeters ability to expand a message and deeply cuts into: (1) retweets (2) new followers (3) traffic to a truly relevant website. When you think about it, the mechanism on twitters end is literally and aggressively killing an information flow.

By: michsineath

michsineath — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:34:12 +0000

This argument assumes a lot. To your point, do we need gray boxes to tell us which countries stifle online speech, or *new protest symbols in a sea of them? The overriding issue is the lack of full and complete transparency in Twitter’s methods and capabilities to censor tweets. For example:

- What does a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” mean?
- What information is required — a court order, a phone call?
- Who is considered an authorized entity — anyone familiar with a country’s law?
- Are members of a country’s news media or press exempt from censorship?
- Can requests for censorship be submitted in bulk, by keyword or by user?
- What is the criteria used for censoring a tweet? Is it only law?
- Is there a deliberation process? If so, what happens to the content during that time?
- Can tweets *coming into a country* be censored from view within that same country?
- Is any part of the technical act involved in censoring a tweet an automated process?
- When will requests be posted to Chilling Effects? Before, after, and if after, how long?

Take this quote from Twitter, also referenced above:

“…Upon receipt of requests to withhold content we will promptly notify affected users, *unless we are legally prohibited from doing so*, and clearly indicate to viewers when content has been withheld.”

- Could Twitter be legally prohibited from sharing a censorship request at all?
- Could Twitter be legally prohibited from indicating content was ever withheld?

It’s not clear, and presents a slippery slope potentially frightening to some. Questioning censorship practices is important and necessary, and these are basic questions I would expect a journalist to be asking. But instead, you’re promoting gray boxes as protest symbols… Forgive me, but I’m confused. Twitter should be 100% clear with its methods and capabilities. Instead, it’s translucent at best.

By: aschrock

aschrock — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:36:35 +0000

Yes, thank you! Here’s the thing: as described here (http://bit.ly/xurpzG) the combination of being able to viewed blocked tweets from other countries and the publicizing of the takedown notices on ChillingEffects means that “Censored” stories will never die. There is an easy workaround for the blocking by country, and other methods will probably emerge as well. Twitter also moves too quickly for takedown notices, of which ALL 4411 have been DMCA-related, clustered, and from the UK & US. Graphics and data sets available on IBM’s many eyes (http://bit.ly/wqqjYg). You really have to look at the bigger picture.

By: Cdub420

Cdub420 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:11:11 +0000

There are still many ways to work around being blocked by offending countries, such as changing ones IP to reflect living in another country where access to the tweet would be available. Though I do not agree with censorship, this is much better than completely removing the message as Twitter was previously doing. This at least is still allowing access to the site. Many protesters in these oppressed countries are very tech savvy and can still organize through the means of social media. Twitter’s new policy though may be there to appease these oppressive and totalitarian countries, still allows protesters to communicate with each other and the outside world.
http://geekedoutelectronics.blogspot.com /2012/01/twitters-new-censorship-policy -win-for.html

By: MForgue

MForgue — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:16:07 +0000

“While the Egypt uprisings were powerful and in some part powered by Twitter, I can easily imagine a world where a censored tweet becomes the ultimate protest symbol; one that unfortunately deprives the protesters of content, but sends the message to protesters that their worst fears are right, and they ought not give up their fight.”

Right, as if any of the protesters throughout the Arab world needed Twitter to tell them that their government was limiting their right to free speech. It’s absurd to laud Twitter for raising awareness of censorship by censoring.

“One can imagine the uprising in France if the government tried to censor a Tweet insulting Sarkozy or one of his ministers, which would presumably lead to a rapid re-writing of that law.”

France isn’t really the issue here, is it? Will an uprising in Syria because of a censored tweet cause Damascus to reassess its policies? Besides, how will the French or Syrian citizens know what they’re protesting about? The content of the offending tweet will have been censored in their country.

By: pmezard

pmezard — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:06:34 +0000

“”"They’re gray boxes of shame alright, but not for the user, or for Twitter. It’s instead a bright signal to a country’s online citizens that their government is limiting their free speech.
“”"

Can you retweet a grey box? If not, there is little chance such signals are going to be seen by a wide audience.

What is really to be hoped is such services remain opened to anonymizing networks.

By: Mzamurman

Mzamurman — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:16:22 +0000

Gah hit send by mistake. To continue the only relevant tweets during the first few days of the Egyptian were those sent from within the country. After the internet blackout people had to turn to CB radio to organize. The censorship of twitter in oppressive regimes means the voice of the oppressed is silenced. Whether arm chair liberals hear them or not means little to those who live in fear. Only the knowledge that others sharing their plight are willing to fight back will make a difference. Twitter has just turned its back on millions of people living under oppressive regimes. This is cowardly behavior. And supporting it as a journalist is not only cowardly but shows a calouslness towards an issue you should be reporting in an unbiased light.

By: Mzamurman

Mzamurman — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:56:28 +0000

This is an incredibly first world perspective on regional censorship of twitter. I don’t know where to begin. Firstly the idea that a protester in a country with a psychoticly oppressive regime (like say Syria) will take the block message as a sign to carry on fighting and not a warning that their protests have been flagged and their life is now in danger, is incredibly naive. In case you forgot Twitter has already given up private information to conform to the UK super injunction law over the Ryan Giggs Scandal. To think they’re going to protect someone in Syria or the like is grossly naive. Secondly assuming that because people, outside that oppressive regime can still read that tweet will lead to some political action is again blindly naive. People in first world countries have been reading, in Time and other publications, about abuse of human rights under oppressive regimes for decades, and it has done people living under those regimes very little good. Despite the claims social media globally want to make about their role in the Arab spring the only tweets that mattered was the ones left by

By: Eideard

Eideard — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:39:44 +0000

After a half-century of fighting for civil rights and civil liberties in the United States; national liberation movements in the 3rd World – I still won’t accept the arrogance of American tea party liberals [deliberately lower case] who feel they have the right to tell the whole world at what rate they accede to what amount of Jeffersonian democracy.

I’m as workingclass progressive and Leftwing as they come – but, that’s tempered by an interest in understanding the history of other nations and other people. Most of whom have existed within their own culture a helluva lot longer than folks living within geographic boundaries that protected us from the wars and invasions suffered by others.

Don’t joke too much about France for an example. 50 years ago was the first time I got on a bus there and went to sit on an empty seat in the front of the crowd – and the driver politely explained to me those seats were reserved for the invalids of war. If the signs aren’t still there – and they may not be – it’s because that generation is dying out.

The memories aren’t.

By: scythe

scythe — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:32:58 +0000

disagree with your reasoning if the end result of a successful censorship request is (quote) “that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored…. it’s instead a bright signal to a country’s online citizens that their government is limiting their free speech.”

condoms for tweets and safe social intercourse
timid walter mitty comes to mind … ‘bright signals’ and all

@ iq160 – finding alternatives to restrictive laws are the jouissance of internetting