Codebreaker

Protesters boycott Twitter on Saturday

Marc Sanchez Jan 30, 2012

After Twitter announced its new censorship policy on Thursday, Tweeters were quick to come up with the hashtag #TwitterBlackout, which called for a one-day boycott on Saturday. Were voices heard by not being heard? Maybe a little. And maybe Interneters, still riding high on their campaign to stop SOPA and PIPA, were eager to re-use the blackout technique.

Zynep Tufekci, who writes the Technosociology blog, thinks the new policy “will be helpful to free-speech advocates.” Tufekci thinks it’s possible that censoring tweets in individual countries, which is basically what the new policy could be a rallying cry for anti-censorship. She writes: “Twitter’s latest policy is purposefully designed to allow Twitter to exist as a platform as broadly as possible while making it as hard as possible for governments to censor content, either tweet by tweet or more, all the while giving free-speech advocates a lot of tools to fight censorship.”

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.