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Kickass.to Links Blocked by Twitter

posted by mattie_p on Friday February 21 2014, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly

l3g0la5 writes:

"Techie News reports:

Twitter isn't allowing users to post a link to Kickass.to stating that the URL in the tweet 'appears to link to a page that has spammy or unsafe content.' I tried clicking on one of the URLs sent to me by one of our publishers who wanted to share with us a draft copy of the soon to be published book and as soon as I clicked on it I was greeted with a rather unfamiliar message on Twitter. 'The site you were trying to visit may be unsafe! This link has been flagged as potentially harmful.' This led me to try out a little test of linking a random Kickass.to link and Twitter blocked the request with a message: 'Oops! A URL in your Tweet appears to link to a page that has spammy or unsafe content.'"

Fluffeh adds: "Questions to Twitter about the reason for this unusual blockade remain unanswered. On its website Twitter claims to use Google's safe browsing diagnostic tool, but the Kickass.to domain is not blocked here. Perhaps even stranger, KickassTorrent's old domain Kat.ph gets the same blocking treatment."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday February 21 2014, @03:24PM

    by Open4D (371) on Friday February 21 2014, @03:24PM (#4355) Journal

    I suspect you're right that Intellectual Property law is the real reason behind this.

    But I can't bring myself to condemn Twitter for having these blocking mechanisms in place. If they gave spammers free reign, their system would be significantly less usable & less popular. And since my industry doesn't seem to be able to produce secure software products for end users, Twitter should be applauded for trying to block 'unsafe content'.

    It doesn't help that a lot of URL shortening services don't seem to have any equivalent to tinyurl's preview feature [tinyurl.com].

    Ideally Twitter would have an opt out, "I know what I'm doing so don't try to protect me". But that would cost them some money to implement & maintain - so it's difficult to criticize them for not having it.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by RobotMonster on Friday February 21 2014, @05:30PM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Friday February 21 2014, @05:30PM (#4429) Journal

    Nah they're blocking these links because they're jealous of the advertising revenue :-)