
Twitter isn't Censoring You. Your Government is. - evo_9
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/27/twitter-isnt-censoring-you-your-government-is/
======
drcube
Twitter is censoring users at the behest of their governments. They don't have
to. How long do you think it would continue to be illegal to mention Naziism
in Germany if Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al, decided to boycott the entire
country? If Hollywood can play governments like evil marionettes, the vastly
richer internet giants ought to be able to pull off a simple boycott for good.

That they aren't says a lot to me. Their priorities are revenue, regardless of
their stated abhorrence of censorship.

~~~
raganwald
My message to America is this: You can’t have it both ways. You as a country
value radical freedom of speech domestically. Hate speech, anything, it’s all
fair game. Fine. You as a country also clamp down on “sinful” behaviour like
gambling and the soft drugs like Marijuana. Your country, you get to set the
rules. But you try to impose your rules on the rest of the world when we do
business with your citizens. A Canadian was extradited to the US for the crime
of selling marijuana seeds to US citizens, which is legal in Canada but
illegal in the US. You have arrested foreign programmers for writing DRM-
circumventing software and foreign businessmen for running online gambling
businesses that catered to American customers.

Your message to the world is that if we violate your laws, you will subject us
to your justice system.

Now we have a US company that does business in other countries, and those
countries have laws that differ from yours. Why shouldn’t they comply with
those country’s laws when the do business there, just as you expect companies
in foreign jurisdictions to comply with American laws when they do business
with your citizens?

My feeling is that if you don’t want Twitter censoring Nazi discussions in
Germany, hand back the Canadian who sold marijuana seeds by mail to Americans.

~~~
andylei
that's not the argument. no one thinks that when twitter does business in
germany it shouldn't be bound by german laws. people think that twitter
shouldn't do business in germany.

~~~
raganwald
I’m ok with that argument!

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joebadmo
I think this is more a problem with centralized services than with Twitter or
any particular government.

I'm with Dave Winer on this one:

[http://scripting.com/stories/2012/01/27/onTwittersNewFilteri...](http://scripting.com/stories/2012/01/27/onTwittersNewFiltering.html)

~~~
pasbesoin
_But, as I've pleaded previously, if we force them to shut down the Internet
to control the flow of information, everyone will know. If there is an ability
to shut off communities selectively, that would be hard to detect._

Although Twitter says they will provide removal requests to the Chilling
Effects site, I remain skeptical. If nothing else, this seems akin to the
increasingly mandated "protest areas" in the U.S. and elsewhere that are well,
or thoroughly, removed from the events being protested.

~~~
davewiner
I'm sure there are requests that governments can make that Twitter will not be
able to report to Chilling Effects.

~~~
stfu
Dave: The EC2 tutorial is nicely done. But the problem of setting up an
individual communication island seems that "they" will come for those people
"personally". While using an existing platform people can "hide" behind
proxies, open wlans and so on the required money trail for bringing a personal
system online makes the "rule breaker" much more identifiable.

------
nextparadigms
Someone was raising the question if there's a coincidence between them doing
this now, a month after that Arabian prince invested $300 million in Twitter.

It's probably not a coincidence, but I bet the US Government wanting to censor
tweets from certain groups in the Middle East for "spreading propaganda" has a
lot to do with it, too. And I'm a lot more worried about that than about a
certain country wanting to censor their own people's tweets, because at least
then that country's citizens can protest against it. Not much another country
can do about US censoring their tweets.

------
Someone
What if one started playing with terms close to forbidden ones? For example,
will Twitter hide tweets denying that people got killed in Mousewitz or Duckau
([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3595693/Mousewitz...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3595693/Mousewitz-
and-Duckau.html))?

If so, an enterprising group of people will probably be able to make Twitter
hide terms that, currently, are utterly unrelated to forbidden terms.

------
rooshdi
I don't buy this. Twitter is in a powerful position to protest for free speech
and they are _choosing_ not to. They have the attention of the mainstream
public and have a precious opportunity to make a stand for human rights
similar to the SOPA protests. By censoring their very own beliefs, they enable
the government censors to continue to silence everyone else. How can you have
a tool for free expression, when you yourself don't fight for it?

------
draggnar
Does anyone believe that the nature of censorship on the internet actually
makes a situation worse? Maybe during tv days censorship worked because a
story was blacked out completely, but on the internet the fact that a story is
blacked out can become a story. It may be argued that this is an attempt to
make more gradual the shift to a more free and open society but isn't it a
step backwards?

~~~
throwaway64
Why is people being actively aware of censorship a step backwards?

------
thetrendycyborg
But Twitter is too.

------
stevefeinstein
The Government is us, isn't it? How did these jokers who "represent" us get
into the positions they're in? We elected them. We need to get rid of the bad
ones, and put in some good ones. And we need those new ones to undo the rules
the bad ones place to keep things in their favor.

------
bbwharris
Slowly but surely, the internet will receive the same censorship apparent in
public broadcasting.

The fun's over. We've been discovered.

~~~
bbwharris
Here's a thought though. Information spreads faster today than at any other
period in Human history. Pandora's box is already open. Other ways to release
this censored information will appear.

~~~
coopdog
As long as there's anonimity there's no way they can censor

Once every single packet in the entire network requires authentication to
move, and they outlaw any kind of network that doesn't require this
authentication, then Pandora's box will be shut again

Was pretty happy with the outrage at SOPA, I just wish it was 'stop
censorship' instead of stop SOPA because the buzz seems to have died off even
with ACTA gettting signed left right and center

------
InclinedPlane
Twitter taking action to remove/block tweets due to individual court orders
would fall under "governments are censoring twitter".

Twitter complying with requests to pre-emptively filter tweets would fall
under "twitter is censoring itself".

