Since the tweets originated from its own site, it’s within Twitter’s right to censor anything and everything that it wants. Simply put, once we log on to the platform, it’s Twitter’s world, and we just live in it.
i think this is a genuinely bad attitude to take.
as a parallel, copyright originally allowed an exchange – protection of exclusive publication rights for an eventual release into the public’s hand. nobody ( reasonable ) believes copyright should be forever or all encompassing; allowing remixes enhances the public good.
similarly businesses in the public sphere are obligated ( in exchange for the protections law gives to the service ) to certain responsibilities. for instance, you should not be able to deny services based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
just because “internet” isn’t a good reason to throw those obligations out.
where to draw the line on the ability to hack at public ( and private! ) apis is a good question. postghost doesn’t seem to be trying to replicate twitter’s service – they aren’t trying to undermine twitter’s business – so this seems like something to consider legitimate fair use. ( whether it is legally already is yet another layer. )
