This imagine is borrowed from http://lama-karma.livejournal.com/3731.html where similar free speech killings by twitter in Bahrain, Iran, China & Saudia are related.
Finally a few days ago Twitter admitted it is moderating trends
Finally a few days ago Twitter admitted it is moderating trends
Not that we expect anything about #Palestine to trend for it is quit clear any effort to trend any Palestinian topic at all is immediate oppressed and the efforts of the twitterbirds die an early death anyway.
More concerning is the fact, that not only trends are being manipulated by twitter, but tweeps get excluded from the API or their whole accounts being moderated to complete invisiblilty. In just a 3 minute search we have noticed, that 9 very active human rights defenders for Palestine are restricted by Twitter and excluded from the Twitter API. Which implicates, they are not visible in search nor will they be able to participate in any trend at all and no one looking for info on #Palestine will be able to find their tweets.
This censorship causes a quit apocalyptic violation of Free Speech as well as the right on information. For it is in the features of Twitter, for those interested in a certain topic, to use the public or advanced search, to look up hashtags of interests and thus finding tweeps messaging and discussing about this topic.
Besides this, there are clear indicators the censorship is selective because many other tweeps retweeting feeds of blogs of censored tweeps are not censored at all. The tweeps in this case are mainly human rights activists spreading news from Palestine which has already been published in media by sharing the news via the sharebuttons on the websites of newspapers.
The current policy of twitter, of restricting or even totally excluding tweeps from API or any other visiblity moderation is severely worrying, for if anyone is interested in news, you neither would buy a book about a certain topic out of which half the pages are torn out. Which is a violation to the right on information acc Art 19 of the ICCPR
But let’s make it visible: This is how it looks like for example when we take our blogger1′s account: @occpal (which has currently around 45.000 newsitem-tweets)
You also can try to find this in Advanced search and look up a certain tweeps username, the account will not even appear if you are aware of the accountname and tweets only get visible when they are being retweeted hence, of this is possible for an increasingly number of messages reach us of people not even able to retweet our tweets.
Previously, this blog was even suspended for so called unrelated tweeting into a trending topic, while tweeting about #Palestine in the #MESpeech of the US president, which is very related if you ask us. But hence, we posted that here as well as the happy announcement that after a few days the suspension was lifted with a warning NOT TO DO THAT AGAIN: Twitter Death for Occupied Palestine.
Now technically spoken, we can not be accused of any tweeting into non related topics no more, for we are invisible and only followed by followers who want to do so. Also, being excluded from the API means total invisibility from trends, our tweets will not even appear nor participate there.
More credible would be that the endless “efforts” of opponents of Human Rights for Palestine succeeding in getting rid of #Palestine tweeps all the time without twitter even regarding any notice about this, no dialogue or questions are asked, contacting about this only meets utter silence and twitter just is moderating and muting activists in upgoing mode.
That these opponents are very keen on muting tweeps for #Palestine is quite clear, not even on twitter but also live in Palestine, IOA lowered itself to unimaginable depths by abusing and hijacking a civilians phone at a checkpoint to tweet absurdities in order to prevent news getting out of Palestine: Live updates catched Israeli Soldiers Hijacking Tweep @Abou_Charlie ‘s Phone To Send Out Lies | July 29, 2011
The next video also speaks for itself. IOA seems to be the only country in need of defending it’s myths by muting people or following, alternating tweets or preventing those:
Israeli Soldier: “We follow you at Twitter!” (at 2:47 min) – video
Israeli Soldier: “We follow you at Twitter!” (at 2:47 min) – video
All this, while mass murderes like #oslo’s Anders Breivik, and Queen of incitement Pamela Geller, zionists and neocons can publicly being found, followed and all related sickening and violating tweets of their fans (which even contain threats, promoting of genocidal ideologies and more) are not censored at all. This is quite an magnum opus of hypocrisy.
We again express our concern about these policies and aware of the fact twitter does not like blogposts, we want to issue this warning for twitter is not publicly propagating these policies which result in providing you half info, half libraries, half knowledge and in the end result in a one-sided opinion.
We tweet by media published news. Nothing more or less than that besides the colloquial good mornings, good nights and best wishes: We are not violent, not offensive nor rude we post… NEWS!
We do not incite we only tweet for human rights and have the right to create awareness for a just cause. Twitter is not only violating the rights of free speech, but also the rights on information of others who by this restriction are disabled from an uncensored offer of information of their choice. We, and all people, can, will and according to law, are entitled (!) to decide for ourselves what is relevant for us or not!
Article 19 of the ICCPR states that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of (their) choice.” This right requires that all governments meet their responsibility to ensure that no one is silenced or excluded simply because they lack access to communication technology.
- For more information about the censored accounts contact us on twitter: @occpal
- For a comparision of twitter’s “enhanced” search try Topsy’s hashtag search and be amazed…!
- For all whose accounts are censored and want a shoutout on this weblog, please use the contactform below (messages will not appear on this page but will only used by us for gathering info related to this topic)
~ reposted with permission by Sofia Smith
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