Hells to the yeah Iggy Pop. You rock.
Can he model a spring campaign please?
Photo via Guerilla Feminism
Gross: Twitter to censor content per government request, goodbye freedom of speech!
Ugh. Really, Twitter?
In a statement released through Twitter’s company blog, they explain their motives concerning censorship in countries who request it:
“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.
…Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world.”
That’s disturbing. Especially seeing as Twitter and Facebook were huge catalysts in the uprisings and subsequent revolutions in the Middle East and South America over the past year.
Twitter only gives famously bad examples of group communication like Nazis, but who’s to stop them from censoring socialist or populist uprisings against, say, a massive opposition to big governments and big corporations? (Hello, Occupy Movement!)
The legality of this political- I mean company- move is not the question: Twitter can do whatever they want with their company and their product. Someday we will have a social network that is neither Facebook nor Twitter that will be run by people who have an actual grasp of this idea behind freedom.
Until that day, all this current censorship talk, first coming from the US government with SOPA and PIPA and now through Twitter, makes one start to wonder: What are they so afraid of?
Activism: Anonymous
Anonymous is ominous. They are declaring a war between Anonymous, the people and the government over SOPA and PIPA type laws. They are planning to take down Facebook this Saturday, Jan 28. In their latest video, they warn:
Government of the United States, leaders of the new world order, you have been warned. Operation Global Blackout part 2, Facebook, engaged. We are Anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget. They should have expected us.
It will be interesting to see if they succeed in taking down Facebook, or at least a portion of the 600,000+ servers. Plus, taking Facebook down on a Saturday when people have nothing to do will certainly make a statement. (and force people to do something else besides look at pictures of other people’s dogs and shit)
What do you think about Anonymous? Or the government trying to control the internet?
Activism: Cher Horowitz
“So like, right now for example. The Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all, “What about the strain on our resources?” Well it’s like when I had this garden party for my father’s birthday, right? I put R.S.V.P. ’cause it was a sit-down dinner. But some people came that like did not R.S.V.P. I was like totally buggin’. I had to haul ass to the kitchen, redistribute the food, and squish in extra place settings. But by the end of the day it was, like, the more the merrier. And so if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians. And in conclusion may I please remind you it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty. Thank you very much.” -Cher Horowitz
Activism: The SOPA Blackouts
I LOVE the SOPA blackouts. It’s an interesting event happening on the internet, a place where it’s rare to have a realtime event. 
When thinking about the SOPA debacle, my mind immediately goes to money, and a power struggle between the people at large vs. powerful corporations and powerful government officials. What bothers me most about the discussion is that the people holding seats in Congress and the House of Representatives are old. I don’t mean to be ageist, but if these people are as technically challenged as my own parents and basically anyone alive in the 70’s, then do they even know anything about the bills they support, and what they mean for mass communication, ACTUAL freedom of speech and liberty?
The Egyptian protests that were put together using Twitter and Facebook are a perfect example of why the government wants to pass bills like SOPA. Mass communication among the people is a huge threat to government control. What if the government had the power to shut down Twitter and Facebook, maybe during protesting times, under the vaguely written SOPA bill? And even certain news websites, because they were doing and saying things the government simply didn’t like? Is that free speech? Or is it free speech, government-approval pending?
This is not Democrat vs. Republican. Not by a long shot. This is censorship for the masses.
I read today on reddit that the entertainment industry paid Congress 93 million dollars to fast-track a bill like SOPA so they could get control over the piracy issue. Does that even make any sense? As a country, a body of people, is it O.K. that corporations are able to pay our politicians to create or not create certain legislation? We’re the people, right? Shouldn’t they be working for us?
Maybe the entertainment industry should find better ways to sell their products, or (shockingly) try to be innovative, instead of trying to push government censorship in our alleged “land of the free.” Or maybe, the entertainment industry could stop producing movies with that “Get ‘Er Done” asshole and make quality things, that people would actually want to spend their money on. Piracy will always find a way, Jurassic Park style. I believe there is no way around it. Enforcing any kind of censorship in the United States of America is a disgrace to everything we as a people have ever believed our country to be.
2PF 