

Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy - fnl
http://www.internetsansfrontieres.com/French-Presidential-Election-Twitter-Justifies-A-Liberticidal-Procedure_a401.html
Particularly noteworthy, these censorship issues are despite French law allowing this kind of parody. Additional link (found in the article, too): http://www.internetsansfrontieres.com/Twitter-Censors-Accounts-Unfavorable-To-Nicolas-Sarkozy_a397.html
======
nextparadigms
So this is the kind of censorship Twitter agreed to? And this is the kind of
"conquering of the web" Sarkozy meant at e-G8 last year?

~~~
coderdude
I'm not sure how "conquering the web" can be spun as something positive for
anyone but the person said to be the conqueror. It's double plus bad when that
message is coming from the leader of a nation. Any nation.

------
DirtyCalvinist
I'm wondering why Twitter would suspend those accounts. Does the French
government exercise some power over them?

<https://twitter.com/#!/_nicolassarkozy> is accessible, at least here in the
US, though @SarkozyCaSuffit and @MaFranceForte are not.

~~~
ephoz
The first was reactivated by Twitter after their owners complied with
Twitter's recent changes in fake accounts policy. Apparently it wasn't obvious
enough that it was not the official account (really?), so they changed the
full name from "Nicolas Sarkozy" to "Nicolas Sarkozy Fake".

Of course, as long as Mr. Sarkozy was not a declared candidate to french
elections, these accounts were all ok... Well that's (french?) politics at
work for you.

For the others, it's just plain state-censorship unless I'm missing something
here.

------
rhizome31
Apparently @_NicolasSarkozy, the one by @kaboul_fr, is back. They had to
explicitly add "Fake" after the name though.

~~~
DirtyCalvinist
Interestingly, "Fake" and not "Faux".

------
jdminhbg
Twitter also suspends accounts unfavorable to Cat Fancy Magazine:

Before: <https://twitter.com/Cat_Fancy> After:
<https://twitter.com/FakeCat_Fancy>

------
mc32
Saying that the suspended accounts were "unfavorable to Sarkozy" and that's
the reason for suspension is stretching the truth --it politicizes something.
Claiming it's Censorship (gov't) rather than censorship (non-gov'tal) appears
to be untrue. I don't see where it was the French gov't which came down on
Twitter. Twitter seems to have a policy against impersonation.

They make a call and that's about it. If you were to impersonate my Twitter
account, I doubtt Twitter would care. If you were impersonate someone of
notoriety (where lots of people could be influenced on misinformation) they
probably would take action. That would seem very reasonable to me.

~~~
ephoz
Although Twitter did not take action for quite a while. They must have been
waiting for the french elections, because they care so much about that...

Another note is that for a fake account (humorous or deceptive) to be
deactivated, Twitter has to receive a complaint from the person (or a legal
equivalent) being impersonated.

BTW, other candidates to the election still have active fake accounts.

~~~
mc32
>BTW, other candidates to the election still have active fake accounts.

Have they informed Twitter and has then Twitter failed to take action on that
complaint?

>Although Twitter did not take action for quite a while.

Had Twitter received a complaint and not acted on it, or did they act on the
complaint in a reasonable time-frame?

>They must have been waiting for the french elections, because they care so
much about that...

Whoever is in charge of "media" by the personality in question (a French
politician) probably didn't scour for impersonators till the campaign was
ramping up, is my guess.

I mean, sure, there could be conspiracies. Maybe the French gov't made a deal
with Twitter --who knows, I don't. Still, attributing malice where none is
evident and it's all conjecture is not helping any. There seem to be simpler
explanations.

