Internet Censorship Of Occupy Wall Street

September 25, 2011

Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government, and our civil society.
Remarks on Internet Freedom – Hillary Rodham Clinton, January 21, 2010

On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17th and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked #OccupyWallStreet from being featured as a top trending topic on their homepage. On both occasions, #OccupyWallStreet tweets were coming in more frequently than other top trending topics that they were featuring on their homepage.
#TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice, September 23rd, 2011

Thinking about e-mailing your friends and neighbors about the protests against Wall Street happening right now? If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, think again. ThinkProgress has reviewed claims that Yahoo is censoring e-mails relating to the protest and found that after several attempts on multiple accounts, we too were prevented from sending messages about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.
Yahoo Appears To Be Censoring Email Messages About Wall Street Protests (Updated) , September 20, 2011

So what will Clinton do about the threat Twitter and Yahoo pose to the economy, government and civil society of the United States?

Ship there CEOs off to Guantanamo or shower them with laudations behind closed doors?

Sadly, that just a rhetoric question.

Posted by b on September 25, 2011 at 15:06 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Shrillary was being ironic, b.
It’s a variation on the old Monty Python (or somesuch) interview skit…
Host: “Good evening. Our first guest is Mr Luxury Yacht and…”
Guest: “No no No! It’s Throat-warbler Mangrove! It’s spelt Luxury Yacht, but it’s pronounced Throat-warbler Mangrove.”
In Shrillary’s case b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t is pronounced ‘information’. She was, of course, referring to the inviolability of her own ‘information’, not yours or mine.
It belongs to the same comedy genre as the Jews’ soon-to-be-scrutinised Piece Process joke.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 25 2011 16:02 utc | 1

b, why is it when you’re discussing say, Fukushima, or dissecting the motives of Israeli tank commanders, you support yourself with deep and insistent amounts of data, but on this, you’ve linked a website that merely makes an assertion about a trending Twitter topic without linking or presenting any supporting data. How do we know what Twitter is doing? Just because your favorite cause isn’t trending with Justin Bieber tweets it’s “censorship?”
Have you read the updates to the ThinkProgress piece “…appears to be censoring?” We’ve seen weasel-like language – guilt by association tactics in other propaganda – why is this suddenly accurate and deserving of consideration?
Poor form for MoA, b.
http://twitter.com/#!/Yahoo/status/116221535152386048

Posted by: Jeremiah | Sep 25 2011 17:53 utc | 2

Me, I would have thought it perfectly normal for Hillary to talk of the liberty of the internet, while at the same time the internet is censored.
The Arab Spring has shown that states shut down the internet without hesitation, the moment that the state is threatened. There is no difference between Egypt and the US. It could be more subtle in the US, less than a complete shut-down. But the same principle operates.
If a politician speaks of liberty of the internet, that’s politics, and you shouldn’t believe it more than that.

Posted by: alexno | Sep 25 2011 19:54 utc | 3

The US mainstream media coverage of Occupy Wall Street is slim to none. Michael Moore has been complaining about this; and he is only heard in the Alternative Press over here; there is some coverage on MSNBC and Current TV. But the rule is a general blackout of news on TV, about protest, (unless it’s right wing, bought-and-paid-for protest).

Posted by: Copeland | Sep 26 2011 1:27 utc | 4

That Yahoo mail hiccup could just be an overzealous spam filter on Yahoo’s side (not that I’d trust yahoo for anything, esp given the state in which that company is currently). The Twitter case is still unproven – and taking it at face value: what is then the certainty that e.g the arab spring twitter hashtags were genuinely at the top ? If someone is bumping one down, couldn’t that same someone bump the other up ? Otoh, Twitter being basically a data-mining company, they have just as much interest in letting that #OccupyWallStreet thing running its course and gather as much data about it as possible (profiling) – not necessarily for Twitter itself for their clients: marketing research shops (that are front-end for…). Remember with all those free services, ‘the product is you’.
Those people (protesters) have way too much faith (and hope) in technology.
Fwiw, in some previous protest, the targeted company blocked cell phone communication Cell Block: What’s the difference between BART and the Chinese government? (slate online).

Posted by: philippe | Sep 26 2011 9:12 utc | 5

The biggest street demos in the world, ever, took place against the invasion of Iraq.
The PTB took no notice (maybe some protestors sent to prison and pepper sprays or what not.) The protestors themselves felt they had done their duty and went home to watch TV, eat stew and potatoes and romaine salad, or just a hot dog, some leftovers, or sushi and delicate mini-roots with a bit of rice and sake – play internet war games, or watch a movie about war and its devastation, the despicable Nazis, or clean out the garage, or….
Demos have become symbolic, empty moves, and most understands them as such.
The only thing that counts is what aggressive or repressive measures the PTB can get away with.
Both parties are playing an irrelevant cat and mouse game, with the authorities testing various means to keep things low key and very circumscribed and cool (they would prefer not to shoot into the crowd and kill dozens or hundreds if it isn’t necessary) and the protestors going home mightily satisfied with their gumption.
Censorship is part of that scene. Testing the waters, making little moves here or there, again, cat and mouse, hollow.

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 26 2011 16:36 utc | 6

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