It ended up being 7 months.
Unfortunately nobody seems to have details of exactly who caved how much in which direction. The government’s demands were bland but also broad; and twitter wasn’t inclined to provide any useful details.
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Thanks. One interesting note from the article:
Many Nigerians had continued to access the site after the suspension using virtual private networks (VPNs) but most corporate organisations, including many media outfits, had obeyed the government’s order.
In and of itself, not surprising, but it suggests that the real leverage point for a platform might not be pressure from ordinary citizens to see cat videos but instead that from local corporations that have come to rely on the platform to get their business-related messages out. They obeyed the government’s order for seven months but they can’t have been happy about it.
If decentralised and federated platforms ever get traction it will be interesting to see how despots handle these situations in the future.
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I never said it was, I said it is a slippery slope.
The extremes are much easier to agree on and yes evidence of genocide should be brought to light.
But what of things that are a bit more grey? For example, many countries have name suppression of accused suspects until convicted by a court, upholding the “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” principle. Should Twitter et al be able to decide when to ignore those laws, especially when those countries do have a well respected legal system.
What does that fictional have to do with this case? A relatively clear-cut case of a social media company conspiring to cover up acts of genocide? How about instead of introducing strawmen into this debate, we instead focus on what is ACTUALLY happening? This has been going on for a long time now, but since it’s happening to Muslims, people seem to not give a shit. People pushed back against Twitter talking about deleting videos of atrocities in Ukraine, so we should reject this too.
maybe explain to me why we should care about twitter deleting evidence of war crimes in the case of Ukraine, but not violence against religious minorities in India? Twitter is not a court of law. But this is evidence that can and should be shared and preserved.
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When it’s the fucking prime minister of a country!?! Everyone should ignore such a law (if it applied, which it doesn’t).
Obligatory: H****r was never convicted of genocide, so…
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You’re asking that as if Twitter hasn’t been ignoring and flouting laws in other countries for years. Twitter users have broken reporting restrictions about parties in civil and criminal trials in the UK for a long time without being booted off or breaking the rules and with without the British government blocking the platform.* And just today we see that they’ve run afoul of Germany’s laws against providing a platform for Holocaust deniers by not enforcing their own rules.
So at this point, it’s not a question of “should Twitter do this?” but rather “when and why is Twitter choosing to do this and when is it not?” The answer doesn’t paint a flattering picture of either the platform or its so-called “free speech absolutist” owner (at least for those of us who oppose fascist and genocidal politicians).
[* I recall some Twitter users getting in trouble with the UK government and/or Twitter for trying to name rape victims or minors involved in a case, but that’s a separate discussion.]
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