The first case of Twitter censorship has happened. It’s solved now, but for over two days earlier this week, a Twitter user alluding to himself as Foulbastard saw two of his Tweets taken offline by Twitter.
The company did not reveal why, but the reason was obvious; Foulbastard had put together dozens of rather nude pictures that Twitter users have been posting on the network the over the past months. Foulbastard then launched FoulsyAngels, a blog with the material. Oops! He had aptly entitled his initial post “The Breasts Of Twitter” because the collage is littered with naked rounds and nipples.
Last Monday Twitter suspended Foulbastard’s two Twitter accounts and a loud outrage ensued among his friends and followers. It soon spilt over into the wider network. An endless stream of Tweets and blogposts protested the censorship and a group called Foulbastardarmy started a Tweet. Twitter did not officially put out a reply to this, but on the GetSatisfaction blog, one Twitter employee submitted this reply; “Twitter does not censor content. Freezing the @foulbastard account was a mistake which we have since corrected. Because of the opt-in nature of following another person on Twitter, […] when enough people block an account on Twitter that usually indicates some sort of attempted abuse—this is how the Twitter community lets us know when something is not quite right.”
But the case shows that Twitter is obviously in a predicament. On his blog, Foulbastard joyously stated that the pictures were USER SUBMITTED content. Twitter is planning on refining their internal tools so the company gets a more ‘accurate quality service’. In other words, they’re going to implement the words in the print that was so much smaller than the breasts.