#TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice |
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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.
This is blatant political censorship on the part of a company that has recently received a $400 million investment from JP Morgan Chase.
We demand a statement from Twitter on this act of politically motivated censorship.
Will they block #OccupyWallStreet from trending again tomorrow when actions throughout the country will once again flare up?
We shall see. Will have more on this topic soon…
Have Fun and Get Something Done on Wall Steet This Weekend (MAP)
YOUR STREET: @OccupyChicago | @OccupyCleveland | @OccupyDallas
@OccupyFDSF | @OccupySTL | @OccupyHouston | VIDEO: Livestream
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PREVIOUS AMPEDSTATUS #OCCUPYWALLSTREET UPDATES
> Occupy Wall $treet – If You Want Real Change…
> UPDATE: Ongoing Occupation of Wall Street: We Are 99% (Roundup, Videos, Photos)
> Protests on Wall Street: Will Economic Inequality Lead to an American Uprising? (Video)
> New York Police Brutally Attack Peaceful Wall Street Protesters (Video)
> Wall Street Protesters Lead By Example – They Moved Their Money Out of the Big Banks (Video)
> Civil Rights Attorney: NY Police Violating Wall Street Protesters’ First Amendment Rights (Video)
> Ongoing Occupation of Wall Street: 99% Uprising in Full Effect (Day 5 Roundup, Videos, Photos)
> Olbermann Calls Out Mainstream Media For “Blackout” Of Wall Street Occupation (Video)
> Occupy Wall Street Will Only Get Bigger – Moore & Olbermann (Video)
> Snobby Illiterati to Protest Wall St. ‘Hippies’ With Champagne Toast
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Previous Comments:
#TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice | AmpedStatus | TRUTH4USA said:
[...] #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice | AmpedStatus. Eco World Content From Across The Internet. Featured on EcoPressed European Debt Crisis [...]
September 24th, 2011 at 3:06 am
Links 9/24/11 « naked capitalism said:
[...] #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice AmpedStatus [...]
September 24th, 2011 at 10:02 am
Links 9/24/11 | Jackpot Investor said:
[...] #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice AmpedStatus [...]
September 24th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Twitter Blocks Occupy Wall Street From Top Trending List said:
[...] to the independent news website AmpedStatus Report, twitter on at least two occasions blocked the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag from showing up on its [...]
September 24th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Bill Cole said:
You really need to show evidence beyond flat assertions to be taken seriously in that accusation. There’s a basic problem with #OccupyWallStreet: there was promotion of both #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyWallSt. That alone could be enough to cripple any attempt to get either one into the trends list, but once people started the ridiculous series of “#THIS is being censored, switch to #THAT” messages there was little hope of anything related to the protests staying in any trends lists for long. #TakeWallStreet flickered in and out of the US trends list 9/17, implying that there wasn’t any *competent* attempt at “censorship.” Also: using the word “censorship” to describe manipulation of the “trends” lists is semantic dishonesty. Don’t forget that Twitter and any other online service that is given away for free is not given away to customers. If you get a service for free then you aren’t a customer, you are a product being harvested for sale to customers.
It is important to understand that what Twitter has said about their “trends” algorithm makes it very clear that pure volume of tweets is not enough, that they have some anti-spamming tricks in the algorithm, and that they include factors like rate of volume growth and diversity of sources and content. The reason the stupid “fill in the blank” hashtags are “trends” is that they are trend bait: tempting games for random children of all ages in diverse social networks that are the only tags on many unique messages. Gaming the Twitter trends system is something of a challenge because the specific details of the system have never been specified, and a look at the tweetstream of what actually makes it “organically” to the trends doesn’t support the conclusion that #OccupyWallSt[reet] ever had trends-type traffic. Instead, #OccupyWallSt[reet] looks more like the tag of an email spammer or 3rd-rate SEO clown: lot of retweets, streams of the same tweet done over and over with just a mention of a media account different in each, the same handful of people retweeting the same things from a tight closed graph, and low-content tweets filled up to the limit from the same cloud of tags.
Evidence of actual “censorship” would be available to Twitter’s paying customers who have more robust access to the tweetstream and history than they give away for free to their cattle^W users. Given how cheap Google has made it for people to be small-scale advertisers with powerful analytics, I would expect (without having checked) that Twitter also is not charging much for access to their data and tools. It might be possible to know whether there was manipulation of trends for less than the nightly Liberty Plaza pizza budget. Whether anyone cares that much about determining the truth is as yet undetermined, but it seems not, so far.
September 24th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Welcome to the Police State: NYC Cops Mace Peaceful Protestors Against Wall Street « naked capitalism said:
[...] were using Twitter to promote participation and visibility. And so Twitter intervened. From AmpedStatus: On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17th and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked [...]
September 25th, 2011 at 8:52 am
Welcome to the Police State: NYC Cops Mace Peaceful Protestors Against Wall Street | Jackpot Investor said:
[...] were using Twitter to promote participation and visibility. And so Twitter intervened. From AmpedStatus: On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17th and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked [...]
September 25th, 2011 at 11:01 am
New York Police State of Mind | Man Are We Screwed said:
[...] Occupy Wall Street, with either hundreds or thousands of participants, has been downgraded as a trend on Twitter. NYT offers an incredibly condescending report/analysis, “The group’s lack of cohesion and [...]
September 25th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
The First Amendment is Well and Truly Dead. « Sky Dancing said:
[...] Yves at Naked Capitalism, Amped Status reports that Twitter is now following the example of the corporate media in ignoring or blocking information [...]
September 25th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
The Power Of What’s Not Said, What’s Not Shown, What’s Not Known « 4&20 blackbirds said:
[...] good point in the comments of his post. the comment was in response to some links I provided about Twitter and Yahoo trying to suppress #occupywallstreet related information/momentum (along with a jab at [...]
September 26th, 2011 at 5:50 am
The Future is in the Past - Ancient Rome said:
[...] If you have a look around at the world currently its not a happy place – in fact you could almost compare our current situation (in the context of a civilization) with the fall of ancient Rome. Greed, government corruption/stupidity, the top 1% controlling 99% of the worlds resources, the people rising up to do what the governments don’t want to do such as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. Social media controlled by Wall Street and blocking movements such as Occupy Wall Street. [...]
September 28th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Google Censors Our #OccupyWallStreet Report | AmpedStatus said:
[...] #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice 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. This is blatant political censorship on the part of a company that has recently received a $400 million investment from JP Morgan Chase. [...]
September 30th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Democracy & Protests, Movements & Tipping Points « Marmalade said:
[...] were using Twitter to promote participation and visibility. And so Twitter intervened. From AmpedStatus: On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17th and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked [...]
October 6th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Reflections on #OccupyWallStreet, #Censorship, & Being the 99% « ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH said:
[...] AdBusters, and the supposedly unintentional or accidental censorship of emails and Tweets with the Occupy Wall Street phrase or hashtag. It does seem ridiculous that with the Occupy movement spreading to Washington [...]
October 8th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us « Social Media Collective said:
[...] time it has been asked. Gilad Litan at SocialFlow (and erstwhile Microsoft researcher), spurred by questions raised by participants and supporters of the Occupy Wall Street protests, asks the [...]
October 19th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Scrutiny » Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us said:
[...] time it has been asked. Gilad Litan at SocialFlow (and erstwhile Microsoft researcher), spurred by questions raised by participants and supporters of the Occupy Wall Street protests, asks the [...]
October 19th, 2011 at 10:14 am
The conservative dilemma | Alex White said:
[...] on middle-class revolutionary movements, there are at least some parallels in how people respond to censorship and crackdowns in Industrialised [...]
October 23rd, 2011 at 12:48 am
Occupy.Scoop » #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet said:
[...] #OccupyWallStreet from being featured as a top trending topic on their homepage. … – #TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17th and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked [...]
October 25th, 2011 at 11:04 pm
Google Censors Our #OccupyWallStreet Report | OWSnews.org said:
[...] out by publishing and linking to the report on their sites. The lesson here for sites like Google, Twitter and Facebook who attempt to censor activism: Your censorship make us [...]
October 28th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
#TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice | AmpedStatus | WorldWright's … said:
[...] DO SOMETHING: @OccupyWallStNYC | #OccupyWallStreet | #OpESRHave Fun and Get Something Done on Wall Steet This Weekend (MAP)YOUR STREET: @OccupyChicago | @OccupyCleveland | @OccupyDallas @OccupyFDSF | @OccupySTL | @OccupyHouston | VIDEO: Livestream via ampedstatus.org [...]
November 26th, 2011 at 7:29 am
Zeitgeist: What 2011 Was Like With Twitter | Ash Chetri said:
[...] Twitter accused of censoring #OccupyWallStreet from trending worldwide. OCT [...]
December 29th, 2011 at 12:31 am