How do you get the word out about a boycott of Twitter when it's Twitter that's needed to get the word out? It was tough, especially in the case of the hastily organized one for Saturday meant to protest the site's new policy of censoring certain tweets, or posts, in some countries.
Some users spread the word by using the black-bar approach (above). But, like Twitter itself, the boycott translated to many different emotions and reactions:
As Saturday became Sunday in some parts of the world, for those who did boycott, this man's tweet spoke volumes about how some people feel about Twitter:
Yet others said perhaps another (better-organized) boycott is in order:
This person, involved in the "Occupy" movement, was torn between protests:
On Twitter's worldwide "trending" chart, the boycott did not make the top 10:
Twitter, contacted by msnbc.com Saturday, declined to comment on the boycott.
But one of the tweets posted by its Twitter's communications team (@twittercomms) suggested "#TwitterBlackout reading," including analyses by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a fellow from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society for different perspectives on the new policy.
"Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that," wrote Jillian C. York, the EFF's director of international freedom of expression, on a blog. "But alas, Twitter is not above the law. Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content."
Zeynep Tufekci, the Berkman Center fellow, wrote that the new policy is "not made hard to circumvent. Twitter helpfully included instructions on how to change your country ('manually override' the country setting which is determined by IP). I don’t know about you, but does this sound like Twitter is caving? Also, obviously, Tor users and proxy users will be able to access the content fairly easily."
Twitter said Friday its users "now send a billion tweets every four days," and that it will not be filtering tweets, something that is "neither desirable nor realistic. With this new feature, we are going to be reactive only: that is, we will withhold specific content only when required to do so in response to what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request."
Related stories:
- Twitter censorship policy leads to boycott
- How to easily circumvent Twitter's censorship
- Activists and bloggers fear Twitter censorship
- Twitter to censor tweets in some countries
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