Did Twitter censor the #flotilla hashtag following the Israel attack?

Did Twitter censor the #flotilla hashtag following the Israel attack?

www.guardian.co.uk

The attack by Israel on a flotilla of ships approaching Gaza has, as you'd expect, generated a huge response on social media - and of course Twitter, with its real-time content, was quick to react.

Many users began the morning by tagging their comments about it with "#flotilla" - a "hashtag" which gives a structure to a discussion or emerging event, as you can filter searches in applications such as Tweetdeck so that you only see those with that tag.

But at around 11am, as #flotilla began "trending" - rising to the topmost-used hashtags on the service - it seemed to vanish.

Was

(visit the link for the full news article)

I love that Twitter got caught with it's pants down, but the fact of the matter is that censorship has and will continue to occur.

I don't use it personally. But most people don't give a rat's behind that censorship is being forced upon their lives. Or that they are being data-mined and snooped upon.

Is ignorance bliss? I think not.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 31-5-2010 by susp3kt]

Originally posted by susp3kt

I love that Twitter got caught with it's pants down, but the fact of the matter is that censorship has and will continue to occur.

I don't use it personally. But most people don't give a rat's behind that censorship is being forced upon their lives. Or that they are being data-mined and snooped upon.

Is ignorance bliss? I think not.

I hate social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter; they're contributing towards a huge anti-privacy trend.

I find it strange that people just don't seem to care, the guy who created Facebook even said that the people who use his site are "dumbf**ks" for trusting him with their information. (source)

As the governments slowly lose their grip on what information people are accessing (internet is replacing TV) they're going to try harder and harder to control the larger websites out there for censorship purposes.

[edit on 31-5-2010 by Pixus]

reply to post by susp3kt


Well upon reading the entire article, it seems to me that they DIDNT censor it, but rather that it was an anti spam feature that automatically kicked in and caused a problem that was soon rectified.

It seemed to me that the main point of the article, despite its misleading beginning, was that Twitter is committed to impartiality.

No, it wasn't an anti-spam feature, that's just crap they tell you. I use twitter hours everyday, and I've seen TTs rise quicker than flotilla did, and stay on the top for hours, even days at a time. It was obvious that they blocked Flotilla from trending, when it should have because of the amount of people tweeting it. What's funny is at the same time 'Israil' was trending.