Twitter Users Call for Blackout to Protest Censorship
It worked against SOPA and PIPA, and now web users are turning the blackout against one of their own: Twitter.
The news that Twitter would begin geographically censoring its content met with more than a little vitriol in the blogosphere today: Forbe’s Mark Gibbs called it “social suicide.”
Since the news broke, the idea of a user-led Twitter blackout has been gaining traction, and it appears that an unknown number of users will not be tweeting about their opposition to Twitter’s new rules tomorrow.
““I WILL NOT TWEET on Saturday Jan 28th for the whole day. Who wants to join?” asks Perla Invteen in Tweet form.
For social media commentator Jeff Jarvis, aligning themselves with the rules of particularly countries could be a slippery slope for the company.
“As Google learned in China, when you become the agent of the censor there are problems,” he said, according to NPR.
Many critics have pointed out that Twitter played a key role in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, and that these kinds of rules would give them leeway to bow to the sorts of regimes the revolutionaries fought against.
There is a certain irony to the hashtag #twitter blackout, as thousands of people use the platform as a means to protest the platform, but it has a certain logic to it as well. These are people that love twitter, and to go a day without tweeting is a true sacrifice.
One user, _HighTea, tweets: “ #TwitterBlackout tomorrow Jan 28 means I must squeeze in twice as much insanitwittery today!”
Another: “The worst thing about a Twitter blackout is that we wouldn’t be able to tweet about it.”
Via: http://goo.gl/UaiFw / Forbes.com
