Reuters’ Paul Smalera, for example, ordered Twitter’s critics to “grow up” and described conspicuous censorship as a “gift” to activists and reporters. Because the blocking will be visible, he said, there is “a crucial distinction from outright censorship.”
This view—that unless a censor can eradicate a message worldwide, it isn’t really censorship—strikes me as the point where the danger of Twitter’s compromise becomes most apparent. It inoculates our concern for the activist who has been silenced (and for the intended audience who cannot hear him) with our own pointless knowledge of his and their suffering.
Smalera even suggests that a Syrian who learns of being censored by Twitter should be thankful for the “box of shame” it hangs on the Syrian government, as if such a person wouldn’t already know that his freedom was limited, and wouldn’t already live in fear for his safety.
“I can easily imagine a world where a censored tweet becomes the ultimate protest symbol,” Smalera writes. “One that unfortunately deprives the protesters of content, but sends the message to protesters that their worst fears are right, and they ought not give up their fight.”
We keep talking of activism as content: it’s as privileged a viewpoint as you’ll ever get from the silicon tower of tech journalism, where the act of disclosure is more virtuous than having nothing to disclose.
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/31/twitters-early-bird-special.html
The whole post is very good.
