InTheCapital

Why People Shouldn’t Crucify Twitter for It’s Censorship

by Carl Pierre/@carlpierre

Have you ever purposefully parked in a handicap spot without a permit? How about shoplift from a department store? Maybe hold up a liquor store on the way to work? Casually shoot heroine in your office?

No to all of the above you say?

Well that makes sense, considering that all of those things are illegal in America.

If people aren’t balking at the US enforcing the laws on these particular crimes, then why are people up in arms about Twitter respecting the laws and rules of a foreign nation?

Lately the internet landscape has been a mire of complaints and tirades against the mobile social media company Twitter, persecuting them for purposefully censoring tweets at the behest of local governments that request they be taken down. Twitter’s new censor policy claims that only posts and tweets that contravene local laws will be flagged and taken down.

For most internet users, the recent bout of protests against the online privacy bill in CongressSOPA has brought about a new ideological climate. After many websites participated in the “Black Wednesday” protests, the majority of people on the web now believe that any form of internet censorship is a slippery slope to heavy breaches of First Amendment rights. With wounds still raw from SOPA, people viewed the idea of Twitter blocking tweets as reprehensible as putting duct tape on a protester’s mouth.

In Twitter’s defense, I fully support their new policy of censoring tweets that are flagged as breaking local laws, and here are 3 reasons why:

1. Twitter is still a business that must respect the regulations and practices of foreign nations they wish to operate in. Sometimes business is just business, and pushing an ideological agenda is incredibly inappropriate, particularly upon another country. Most Americans are oblivious to the idea that not all countries run on the same ideology that the United States was founded on, so any sort of law in another country that is perceived as even slightly undemocratic elicits waves of protest from ignorant Americans. Using the banner of free speech is not a political vehicle that allows you to claim immunity to foreign laws.
2. The censored tweets can still be viewed in any other country by any other user, just not in the country of origin. It’s not complete censorship, only within the body of government that the tweet violated laws in. Most people who are railing against this new policy are not the most informed, and don’t understand that the tweets can still be read by other people in other countries. Admittedly it’s not the most ideal method of broadcasting thoughts, but it’s still a way for those voices to be heard.
3. Don’t blame the rules, blame the rule-maker. Why are we vilifying Twitter for abiding by laws they clearly didn’t create? If people have a real beef with this censorship, take it up with the local governments that created and enforce these laws. If your country’s legislation is rubbing you the wrong way, write to your government or even protest if you want, but don’t blame Twitter for respecting the rules.

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, has taken a great deal of heat on these issues and responded to recent criticisms with this:

It’s a super complex issue. It takes a while for the scholars and the people who study these matters to weigh in and start to say, ‘Wait, this is actually a thoughtful and honest approach to doing this and it’s in fact being done in a way that’s forward-looking.’ So we wait for that to happen .

I empathize with Costolo for the position he was put in, a position many leaders of booming businesses find themselves:

A rock and a hard place.

soupsoup:

Look who bought the top promoted tweet for “Romney Tax Returns”

This is how you use the promoted tweet in a campaign. Who knows if it’s actually effective…

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

The whirling dervish that is the 2012 Republican nomination blew down the east cost from New Hampshire to South Carolina like a tornado. Not everyone survived. We lost two candidates in the process and what seemed like a sure thing for Mitt, is now in question after Gingrich’s decisive win in S.C. The whole thing took us by surprise, but the all-seeing eyes of Facebook saw it coming the whole time. Those sneaky bastards.

Thanks to the fine folks at the Alexandria-based OhMyGov, we can see exactly how momentum built for Gingrich as tracked by Facebook fans. Turns out that even after 245,563 debates, when the candidates speak, the people are still listening. Check out the following charts below.

Romney’s Facebook fans left him in DROVES after his January 16th debate. While he was in a Facebook freefall, Gingrich continued to creep up in the polls, finally rising sharply after lashing out at CNN’s John King, after his ex-wife’s ABC interview. We have the video of Newt’s corpulent ire right here…

Personally, we’re pretty surprised at how fickle Facebook ‘fans’ are—jumping ship on Mitt during and immediately after the debate. This falls pretty much in line though with the tepid response Republicans have had for this field of candidates this year. Voters are easily swayed, more likely to swing from candidate to candidate.

There is, of course, an exception to the rule—Ron Paul, who boasts an extremely devout following. 

We have to keep in mind that this is but one small metric to consider…it’s just Facebook, right? Well, yes and no. Sure, Facebook is one platform and anyone has access to be Mitt Romney’s fan on Facebook—not just legal voters or even US citizens. But it has been noted before that Facebook users don’t shy away from their true feelings on the social network. We might be seeing more and more that as Facebook users go, so goes the country. We’re not there yet, but there’s no question it is a trend to monitor.

Instagrammed image via @abcworldnews

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Here’s what you need for people on the ground at the Colbert/Cain Rally

@ColbertNewsHub - Pretty explanatory, I think.

@abcworldnews - They seem to be covering on Instagram.

@AndyParas - Charleston Post and Courier media guy…tweeting and
storifying the event

@daveweigel - Slate Politics Blogger. Hilarious. He just tweeted some pix of students waiting in line.

@Live5News - Local news in Charleston…tweeting pix too

@MarkLive5News - Local reporter CBS 5 News in Charleston

@scpetrel - a bystander who is live tweeting and at the rally, too

@wcmacmillan - a College of Charleston student who is at the rally, tweeting pix

your possible event hashtags: #cofc #colbert #colbertrally and
possibly #rockyoulikeahermancain

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Adam Sharp knows DC inside and out. He also knows media. With a background in media production, some time as Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and as Executive Producer of Digital at CSPAN, Sharp is about as plugged in to the DC politics and media scene as one can be. It’s no wonder Twitter scooped him up as their first DC hire back in November 2010.

Currently, Sharp is Twitter’s Government and Politics Manager, which consists of (probably) a lot of heady planning and strategizing for the future of Twitter as a powerful tool for democracy. Yeah, like we said, heady stuff. Thankfully, Adam was able to take an hour out his day to talk with the Personal Democracy + Forum. The conference call was titled, “How To Use Twitter For Personal Democracy”. InTheCapital jumped on the call to listen as Sharp dropped knowledge. Here are some of the highlights.

ON THE 2012 ELECTION & ‘Scalable Retail Politics’…

“What you are seeing in particular this year is Twitter rapidly becoming the real time index for the election,” Sharp mentioned. He believes that the true utility of Twitter is it’s ability to create what he called “scalable retail politics.” He addressed the very real concern from politicians that while Twitter is no doubt helpful, it does cannot replace face to face interactions. Sharp, however, believes that as Twitter becomes ubiquitous voters “will have as much of a chance to be heard as anyone else…even if you can’t get to a town hall meeting.”

Sharp also pointed to what we believe is the most salient argument for Twitter during this campaign season: “Twitter has enormous capacity to demystify government and humanize the people in it.” We couldn’t agree more.

ADVICE TO ALL POLITICIANS…

“Government members are often fixated on follower numbers…when it comes to followers you can start with a mathematical approach, but you need to figure out how to reach out and start relationships.”

He continues, “engagement is a major measure…follower accumulation is a little overappreciated. The most influential users don’t always have the most followers, but they do have the most interesting content.” 

IF YOU WANT TO GAIN MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS…

“How do you take a passive follower and turn them into an echo chamber for your message?…On Twitter the path to that is having compelling information, engaging your users, being yourself, and not having your feed be a regimented stream of press releases.”

ADAM’S TWITTER FACTS

• There are 100 million active users worldwide.
• 70% of those are outside US, which leaves about 30 million in the United States. That’s 1/10 adults in the US actively engaged on the platform. We at InTheCapital only expect that fraction to grow.

these smiles are totally fake

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

The 2012 Presidential campaign was absolutely BANANAS today. Rick Perry dropped out (oooh!). Newt Gingrich’s ex is planning to spill the grisly detailsof his marriage (squeals with excitement). Mitt Romney is in hot water about his tax returns. And, wouldn’t you know it, Iowa reverses their winner of the caucuses (grips desk to keep from fainting).

Oh yeah, and did we mention that Steven Colbert is holding a joint rally tomorrow at 1pm at the college of Charleston with the event title of, “THE ROCK ME LIKE A HERMAN CAIN: SOUTH CAIN-OLINA PRIMARY RALLY” (head explodes).

Okay, so we may be going overboard slightly…but can you blame us…we likethis stuff. Don’t be fooled, though, we are all about the casual political bystander. That’s why, with the final South Carolina Primary debate coming tonight and the actual primary on Saturday, we have compiled a list of people to follow to keep ya up to date with the twists and turns in the race. The list is below.

As always, you can follow my personally curated politics list, here. I highly recommend it if you enjoy being ruthlessly bombarded for hours by 100s of the rabid political Twitterati (I know, sounds great, right?) 

@PeterHambyCNN - Peter Hamby, CNN Political Reporter who broke the news today on Rick Perry’s dropping out of the race. He’s a younger guy and a tenacious reporter.

@BuzzFeedBen - Ben Smith, Buzzfeed Editor in Chief who is an absolute monster tweeter. Follow at own risk as he tweets and retweets anything and everything relevant. You will be informed, though.

@AliNBCNews - Ali Weinberg, NBC Campaign embedded reporter who has been down in South Carolina for months. She knows the scene on the ground and can provide some great insights. She’s also one of the nicest people you’ll meet…if that means anything.

@StephenAtHome - Stephen Colbert, comedian and tv host who is sort of running for president in South Carolina…and sort of getting 5% of the vote…and sort of hosting a rally with former Republican Presidential candidate, Herman Cain. Wow. I can’t believe I actually typed that and it wasn’t a joke. Stunned.

@chucktodd - Chuck Todd, NBC chief Political Director. He’s the most savvy political analyst out there. His twitter handle is an asset to anyone who cares about this politics stuff.

@fivethirtyeight - Nate Silver of the New York Times does great, witty, and digestible analysis of all the polling and stats that come out of the campaigns. He’ll tell you in real-time what Newt’s odds are of winning in S.C. before AND after Newt’s ex spills all the gory details of their relationship. a good follow, indeed.

@TheFix - Chris Cillizza, Politics Guru at the Washington Post. He’s funny, smart, humble, and a prolific debate tweeter. I highly suggest this as one of your follows.

Some of the Locals, Too

@bszobody: Ben Szobody, Greenville News reporter

@jimdavenport_ap: Jim Davenport, SC-based AP political reporter

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

A lot happened yesterday on the ole world wide web. We’ve personally posted thousands of words and read hundreds articles on the subject and, let’s be real, here, some of this stuff isn’t exactly riveting. We get it. There’s no denying though that yesterday was a remarkable day not just for opponents of SOPA, but for the internet and advocacy in general. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, we saw the raw, ultimate power of the internet rear it’s binary head. People stepped up. Minds were changed. And all of it cost barely a dime. Here’s what happened yesterday.

2.4+ million SOPA-related Tweets from 12am-4pm ET today. Top 5 terms: SOPA, Stop SOPA, PIPA, Tell Congress,#factswithoutwikipedia

— Twitter (@twitter) January 19, 2012

• 25,000 blogs blacked out their content yesterday.
• 12,500 sites added banners opposing SOPA/PIPA
• Congress was receiving 2000 calls per second.
• 90 million users came to Wikipedia yesterday.
  
• 4 million people used Wikipedia to lookup contact info for their congressperson.
• Over 500 people emailed Wikipedia
• Zuckerberg’s Facebook Post on SOPA got 200,000 likes in 1 hour.
• “210,000 people signed the  Progress for Change Campaign Committee’s Petition to stop SOPA.”
  
• “30,000 Craiglist members had used the PCCC’s site to contact Congress.”
• “SOPA-related Twitter posts were popping off at a rate of a quarter-million every hour”
  (don’t believe me? check out the video I took: )
• “the hashtag topic #wikipediablackout “at one point…constituted 1% of all tweets”
• By Wednesday afternoon, 4.5 million people signed Google’s anti-SOPA petition.
• 1000 protesters joined NYC Tech Meetup Outside NY senators’ offices in NYC.
• As BostInno reported, at least 7 representatives changed their position on annonuced SOPA. And the NYTimes announced this morning that, “at least 10 senators and nearly twice that many House members their opposition.”

Even Jon Stewart chose to weigh in on the debate, absolutely skewering lawmakers for their ignorance as to how the internet works, and their for choosing to refer to tech experts as “nerds”. This is required watching.

Lastly, here is Google’s SOPA infographic. It shows just how vocal the internet community has been since SOPA/PIPA’s introduction to congress.

 We at InTheCapital and BostInno would like to tip our cap to everyone who stood up yesterday and continues to stand up for a free internet. The fight is in no way over, but the people have been heard and that’s a rare thing these days in Washington.

Sources:

Twitter

Time’s Techland

New York Times

[Lead Image via Michael Appleton, New York Times]

Holy Shit. So I took everything on Twitter with the hashtag #SOPA and threw it into a column on my tweetdeck. Here is a video of the real time frequency of SOPA-related tweets. They gonn’ break them internets!

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Oh, how we love us some good ole fashioned political bickering. The battle for the general election seems to be shaping up (read: is all but decided) for a Romney v. Obama showdown and with it will be come some finger-pointing, accusations, and hopefully some bulging forehead veins. Like in many areas this campaign season, the candidates have taken to the information superhighway to get their message heard. As the New York Times reports today, Mitt struck first in what will surely be the first of many Twitter skirmishes with David Axelrod responding acerbically.

In fact, it started innocently enough, just after noon, with a Twitter posting from @MittRomney, the Mitt Romney Twitter account.

@MittRomney Mitt Romney

More Americans have lost their jobs under@BarackObama than any president in modern history. http://t.co/CyCSpY9M

Mon Jan 16 17:27:13 via Mitt Romney

A few hours later, David Axelrod, the longtime strategist for President Obama, offered up a reply to Mr. Romney.

@davidaxelrod David Axelrod

. @MittRomney A picture’s worth a thousand misleading words. This chart tells the story.http://bit.ly/z4V0Us

Mon Jan 16 20:19:30 via David Axelrod

Mr. Axelrod included a link to a graph on the Obama campaign’s Web site, which cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show 22 consecutive months of job growth.

Axelrod has often proved himself to be a quick and incisive defender of Obama in the public forum (it is his job)…we at InTheCapital especially enjoy his use of ‘Dude’ to attempt to disarm top Romney advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom. For the record, there were over a dozen back and forth tweets between them on the subject. 

@davidaxelrod David Axelrod:

@EricFehrn Dude, none of my business, but shouldn’t you be in debate prep instead of trying to explain yourself to me?

This tactic is, of course, known as the ‘bro defense’, whereby one member of the argument invokes the use of the informal, ‘dude’ to seem like he/she doesn’t care as much about the subject at hand, thereby making him/her (Axelrod, in this case) seem, like, totally cooler. A savvy play indeed by Axe.