

Is Twitter Actively Censoring and Blocking Searches for #flotilla? - ComputerGuru
http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/twitter-actively-censoring-flotilla/

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symesc
I have no doubt twitter censors content.

When George Bush was up here in Canada on a speaking tour last year I was in
the first car stopped at the light while the police blocked traffic for the
motorcade.

I was sitting there, so I took pictures and tweeted about the experience while
waiting and while the ex-president's cars went by.

By the time I got home 20 minutes later, those tweets were no longer in my
account.

I know they hit the twitterverse because a couple of my friends were able to
re-tweet what I'd posted because they were using desktop clients that stored
the messages.

My reaction was surprising at the time: I wasn't mad. I was scared.

I can understand why officials would be worried about tweets giving away
details that could be used maliciously, but this was happening in real time.
The president was THERE, at that moment. There was less intelligence value to
my tweets than there was in the advertising for his attendance at the speaking
engagement.

But still, it was scary and I understand much more clearly what people living
in oppressive regimes must feel daily.

I have those tweets, reposted by others on my behalf, so the Internet healed
itself. Can't stop the signal. . . .

~~~
jrockway
Do you really think Twitter, home of the Fail Whale, can actually process your
tweets in real time just to censor you? What would they get out of that? Money
spent on hardware and software just to discourage people from using their
product? Seems unlikely.

What seems likely is database replication issues or a buggy caching algorithm.
You are not important enough to censor.

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jrockway
No, they aren't. It works fine for me.

~~~
rriepe
They still are for me (Florida). Where are you located?

~~~
ComputerGuru
Testing it from the states (LA) and the middle east (jordan) and it's
definitely blocked. And it's not just #flotilla, also israil and other tags
related to the topic are being blocked. Israil shows up in the TT list, but
the search doesn't work. The rest are completely hidden from TT as well.

~~~
alex1
Yup, I'm also in Los Angeles area and a search for #flotilla gets no results,
not even a "No Results" message.

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rriepe
I really want to think that this is a technical error.

"Israil" was another term that is broken in the search. It's now showing as
trending for me. I'm hoping "flotilla" will follow.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Actually, it's still broken. While it shows in the trending topics lists, try
actually clicking on "Israil" and you get a technical error page:
<http://twitter.com/search?q=%C4%B0srail>

~~~
rriepe
Yeah, the search is still broken. But at least it's showing now? It seems too
inconsistent to be active censoring.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I don't know - I don't think "Israil" was being blocked from being a TT, at
least, it wasn't on trendistic while not being on twitter.

I think "inconsistency" and active censorship go hand-in-hand: you have to
manually block certain topics, and so the ones you didn't catch slip through.
And maybe you need to make it less than perfect to make sure you can always
claim "technical difficulties."

I just find it hard to believe that twitter's staff was working around the
clock during the Iranian elections to make sure that everything kept going
smooth, but right now it's been 12 or so hours and their search is broken for
a similarly-important news story.

~~~
rriepe
I have to give Twitter more credit than that.

Politics of the issue aside, censoring _anything_ could seriously hurt
Twitter. Even if we're cynical and we don't give them the benefit of a doubt
integrity-wise, it's still a stupid move for them from a PR standpoint.

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gojomo
It's a holiday weekend in the USA. This could easily be something like an
automated system designed to prevent spamming the trending topics that is
broken or needing operator/editor attention that's in short supply. Casting
the accusation of 'censorship' without evidence is hair-trigger indignation-
as-sport.

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jlangenauer
I hope this is a technical error too. But I'm unable to search for #flotilla
at the moment too, but searches for other terms work fine.

One hopes there will be a reasonable explanation.

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mccv
If you're logged out the search appears to work. It also works via the API.
Seems to be a bug that only manifests itself while logged in

~~~
jrockway
But clearly it's censorship!!11!

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ithkuil
searches work for me (europe) but people continue to complain that they aren't
working.

Is all this about searches or about trending reports?

~~~
ComputerGuru
Both. Some topics are clearly trending (see screenshots from trendistic in
TFA) while not being listed on twitter, and searches for topics (listed as
trending or otherwise) are giving technical errors for most people.

~~~
macemoneta
I'm a member of the Chuck (tv show) community. We encountered similar issues
in trending efforts. Some hash tags will simply not trend, and there's no
apparent rhyme or reason. Twitter support never responded to any inquiries as
to why some seemingly innocuous keywords (like #SaveChuck) would not trend,
but others would.

I assume they have their reasons, and as a free service they have no
obligation. It's still annoying for the user community.

