If you've noticed that totally is a particularly apolitical day on Twitter, it might be because there's a boycott going on. Earlier this week, Twitter announced that they now had the capability to censor tweets and users on a country by country basis, allowing the social network to conform to certain governments' wishes to control the flow of social media. These changes could severely affect dissidents' ability to organize support, potentially preventing the kind of revolutions we saw during the Arab Spring. It also would allow Twitter to expand their market share in countries with more controlling governments, which is why they don't mind selling out on the whol freedom of speech thing.
The Twitter boycott began cropping up over the past few days under the hashtag "#twitterblackout." Of course, unlike the massive internet blackouts as a result of SOPA, it's a lot easier to miss certain politically active people shutting down their Twitter for a day or two. Still, it's a worthy cause to protest this kind of far reaching censorship. I understand that companies must compete for market share by cooperating with international governments, but do they have to be so brash about abandoning civil rights to do so? I'm all for Twitter wanting to make money, but at what social cost?
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