Twitter Boycott Planned To Protest Twitter's Censorship Plan

Twitterers have a message: Tomorrow, turn off the tweets.

Users of the social media site are planning a Twitter boycott to protest the company's new ability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis.

Twitter announced Thursday that it can now block tweets, as well as individual accounts, from appearing to users in specific countries, and that it may use the feature to comply with governments' request to censor information. Before, Twitter could only block tweets and accounts globally.

Some users are calling on fellow Twitterers to silence their tweets on January 28 as a way of expressing their opposition to Twitter's plan. They are using the hashtag #TwitterBlackout to organize the boycott, and tweets tagged with the hashtag are rolling in at a clip of about 12 per minute. The tweets span a range of languages, including English, German, Spanish and Arabic.

"Twitter starts deleting tweets, I stop posting tweets. Join the #twitterblackout tomorrow!" tweeted @HousseinyRita.

Another user, @Fadi_alshehri, wrote, "#twitterblackout if i cant talk freely then i don't wanna talk."

The protest follows less than two weeks after thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, protested two controversial anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, by shutting down or posting notices outlining the downsides of the proposed legislation. Google alone managed to secure more than 7 million signatures for an online petition opposing the bills, and tweets about SOPA and PIPA numbered in the hundreds of thousands the day of the protest.

Yet this online protest, and others like it, have relied on Twitter as a means of communicating between protestors and buttressing support for their movements. It remains to be seen whether silencing tweets will call attention to the cause, or whether the mute accounts will go unnoticed.

Twitter defended its plan to offer the ability to block tweets in certain countries by noting that it remains committed to free speech online.

"One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user's voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow," Twitter wrote.

Comments

[Vasya Bricklyn]

04:09 PM on 08/01/2012

Yes people. Put your electronic hero worship away for a day and go out and GET A $#@$%!& LIFE.

[Craig Koebelin]

05:40 PM on 02/01/2012

After the Arab Spring, when Twitter was a huge help, how come now they act chicken? China?

[bstones454]

11:49 AM on 02/01/2012

I am not a celebrity therefore do I need Twitter... no, far too busy with my journals and studies.

[adika3z]

02:47 AM on 02/01/2012

who is the CEO president of twitter

[tjunkie]

12:22 AM on 02/01/2012

Ain't it hypocritical to use twitter as a platform to convey message not to tweet?

[kemstone]

06:10 PM on 02/01/2012

No. They are protesting one of the company's policies, not the company itself, and when you need to get a message out specifically to twitter users, the only practical way to do it is through twitter.

[syndilong]

08:41 AM on 01/31/2012

Dont shoot the messenger. It is not Twitter that is to blame, it is the governments of those countries.

[liarfire]

01:29 AM on 01/31/2012

Maybe people should just decide to stop using it all together as i do not think that the government nor twitter will back down...i personally will not be using it any longer as it goes against my principles...If more people had them the world would better a better place...And freedom of information would not be something we need to fight the authorities on every day.

[caryhartline]

11:08 AM on 01/31/2012

If you want to have a better version of freedom of speech then you use tools like Twitter. Twitter is what has been used in toppling recent regimes and it's now the most popular way to get together a protest. Twitter has become necessary for effective protesting.

[liarfire]

05:27 AM on 02/01/2012

and this is why they will censor it...you watch..the fight is not over yet....its going to get ar worse for people.. mark my words

[liarfire]

01:19 AM on 01/31/2012

your government wants to keep you under strict control... so you can not organize a resistance to the oppression they have planed for you....

[Geovan]

05:46 PM on 01/30/2012

Why only a single day? This is meaningless.

[caryhartline]

11:09 AM on 01/31/2012

Even one day of no one being a website can disturb advertising. If no one searched on Google for one day then Google would lose millions and millions of dollars.

[Geovan]

08:20 PM on 01/31/2012

how would losing 1/365 of a year's revenue upset these behemoths? foolish.

[Gerio]

10:58 PM on 01/31/2012

These "Giants" can afford it: one day is useless and that is not going to affect them enough to make a difference. And then life will go on with that repressive form of censorship: imagine that even here in the USA, we the (little) people are becoming the intellectual "slaves" of government, where the constitution will be shelved to gather dust at our expense!

[MiamiMama]

05:32 PM on 01/30/2012

Free Carl Lee! Atica Atica no justice no peace. Shut down those tweets!

[bikefolder32]

04:49 PM on 01/30/2012

Whatever did people do before Twitter? Same thing they will continue to do - live their lives. Twitter's a nice tool, but there are people who use it like a second living space. It's not supposed to be where you live. And like it or not, we are a global society, and we can't force all other countries to adopt American rules. I think the ability to tailor the censor "per country" is actually a better idea than blocking an account altogether. When there's still so much gap between countries on what's acceptable, some is better than none.

[kemstone]

06:11 PM on 02/01/2012

But it makes revolutions like the Arab Spring that much harder to accomplish.

[imanormalalien]

01:05 PM on 01/30/2012

If Huffingtonpost can censor comments, why can't twitter? Hypocrisy.

[rhomsky]

05:28 PM on 01/30/2012

Here here! More censorship is great and all outlets should be encouraged to do it. (?)

[imanormalalien]

10:17 PM on 01/30/2012

No, I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of Huffingtonpost for having an article essentially against Twitter's position, when it's doing the same thing

[diverjay]

10:59 AM on 01/30/2012

Twitter can learn a lot about censorship from HP.

[laparkuh411]

10:53 AM on 01/30/2012

Not tweeting for a WHOLE day? That'll show em....

[caryhartline]

11:14 AM on 01/31/2012

On Twitter, advertisers can pay over $100,000/month. There are several companies that advertise in one day. One day of no Tweeting could cost Twitter at least $50,000. Also, if companies pull out of advertising to avoid the blackout, Twitter could end up losing millions of dollars.

[MikeW CA]

10:12 AM on 01/30/2012

I suspect that Twitter needed a new censorship policy because the US Government wants it to censor.