Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/12/internet-service-provider-blocks-social-media-after-trumps-twitter-ban-allegedly-at-request-of-customers.html
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It is interesting that they decided to take a stand now, and not when fascists were getting BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and left wing activists banned from fb and twitter over the last four years. It’s almost as if they have some kind of political agenda.
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I know you’re being facetious, but it is worth noting that the geographic area the company serves (eastern Washington and northern Idaho) is a hotbed of white supremacy. They know exactly which customers they have to appease.
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Good choice of word. It’s not as if we have any historical examples of how well appeasement works out.
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Our company does not believe a website or social networking site has the authority to censor what you see and post and hide information from you, stop you from seeing what your friends and family are posting. This is why with the amount of concerns, we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed from our network.
Hol’ up . . .
“Our company does not believe that a company has the authority to control what you can access, so we’re going to control what you can access.”
That about right?
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I’m betting marketing wasn’t involved in that meeting.
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Looking at their site I’d guess that they haven’t had a marketing department since at least the 1990s
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[incomprehensible 60+ word run-on sentence with zero punctuation]
I probably could have worded that better…
Yeah no shit.
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This is a good thing guys; a clear cut piece of evidence why ISPs need to be a regulated utility, or at the very least, need some robust competition.
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Ahh but see, they’re only doing it as a service to their customers! So it’s different!
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They should charge extra for this service. Now that’s capitalism!
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As has been pointed out, an ISP blocking content violates WA’s net neutrality law. But it also runs the risk of the ISP losing their common carrier designation where they’ll have to monitor ALL traffic going through their customer’s systems. I doubt they have the staff for that.
Saying customers were asking for this is curious. I wonder if someone sued for the common-carrier issue and asked to see their customer service records in discovery that they could produce them.
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I think you’ve got the Reich idea here.
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This isn’t going to last long. Once MeeMaw gets a jones to post her hate-memes and realizes there’s no place to do it, the ISP is going to relent.
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Looks like they have backpedaled. They’re saying that it was all a misunderstanding and they aren’t blocking anything unless you ask for it to be blocked.
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<tinfoil hat>
I mean, blocking Fashbook and Twitler at the ISP level could also be a way to prevent the Fine People of spokane from incriminating themselves in the coming days, or having their activities tracked if they are “planning something” and don’t want any of the less disciplined fringe leaking all the tunnel blueprints to the social web… And to be totally fair, at least in the case of Facebook, even if you’re “logged out” blocking at the ISP level is pretty much the only surefire way to avoid “reporting” data to their servers…
</tinfoild hat>
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I live in Spokane area so I read this story yesterday and had to read it twice to make sure I understood it. As much as I loathe Facebook and Twitter I simply don’t use them. I don’t go to those sites. I don’t need someone else to block me from seeing them. That’s like an alcoholic asking the bars to lock their doors so they can’t get inside. Or am I missing something?
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Who wrote this? This is barely readable.
This in no way is a total shut down from seeing these sites and if you read it as that, that is far from the truth, there is to many customers that use these sites for work and business and family just the ones asking will be blocked
How can a person with that level of literacy work for (or potentially lead) an ISP?
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The self-censorship is strong with the Trump cult.
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