Users organize TwitterBlackout to protest censorship

PanARMENIAN.Net - The announcement by Twitter that it has plans to allow country-specific censorship has stirred anger among users of the microblogging service.

According to Al Jazeera, some users have called for a boycott, and organized an online protest on Saturday, Jan 28, around a series of hashtags - a form of metadata tagging using the symbol # - #TwitterBlackout, #TwitterCensored and #J28.

Twitter has said it can now block tweets on a country-by-country basis if legally required to do so.

The company depicted the new system as a step forward. Previously, when Twitter erased a tweet, it vanished throughout the world. Under the new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.

After having written a letter to Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder, the France-based media-freedom advocate organization Reporters Without Borders stated its support of Saturday's boycott. A tweet on the organization’s official account early in the morning on Saturday read, "joining the #Twitterblackout".

But the calls for a boycott have by some been seen as the wrong method to address the issue.

Anonymous, the international cyber-activist network, which has often been at the forefront of freedom-of-speech movements online, has said they will not be joining the blackout.

"We will not join the J28 #TwitterBlackout. It is more important than ever to spread info" the network said on its official Twitter account.

Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the website chillingeffects.org.

The critics are jumping to the wrong conclusions, Alexander Macgilliviray, Twitter's general counsel, said.

"This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability," he said. "This launch is about us keeping content up whenever we can and to be extremely transparent with the world when we don't. I would hope people realize our philosophy hasn't changed."