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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/07/12/top-assange-defense-account-deleted-by-twitter/
One of the biggest Twitter accounts dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, @Unity4J, has been completely removed from the site. The operators of the account report that they have been given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and have received no response to their appeals.
Any Assange supporter active on Twitter will be familiar with the Unity4J account, which originated to help boost the wildly successful Unity4J online vigils in which well-known Assange defenders would appear to speak out against his persecution. As of this writing, the account has been gone for a day and a half.
"About 8:45am CST on Thursday July 11, one of our Unity4J Twitter team members went to retweet on the account and noticed that the account was no longer accessible," reports pro-Assange activist Christy Dopf, one of the operators of the account. "When each of us also attempted to access the account we all received the same message 'Account Suspended'. Twitter did not send us a reason or violation for the suspension. So an appeal was submitted. We did receive correspondence that Twitter got our request and the case is currently open. Unfortunately we do not have a timeline on how long this could take."
[Ed. note: The linked story variously uses "suspended", "removed", and "deleted"; seemingly interchangeably. When attempting to load "https://twitter.com/Unity4J the response was:
Account suspended
This account has been suspended. Learn more about why Twitter suspends accounts, or return to your timeline.
so it appears that there may be hope for the account to be unsuspended; time will tell. --martyb]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @08:53AM (10 children)
I just don't understand this. Twitter is an American company. Assange is a public enemy according to American propaganda. They will shut it down and open a new channel which frames Assange into posting porn with kids if USA government says so. Why the hell use it? What is wrong with owning a platform?
Do we really want to be corporation's slaves so hard?
The website of these folks in "Unity" looks like a business card. Maybe a good idea it to publish resources there and push updates through RSS? Why there must be a tracking, spyware-installing proxy called "Twitter" which owns the right to censor everything, introduces self-censorship and shortens attention spam of people to make media even worse?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @12:17PM (2 children)
Because people want centralized persistent identities and the content classification and rating that comes with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @06:04PM (1 child)
open, decentralized solutions to this problem do exist, but it has not gained traction yet, for various reasons.
https://zotlabs.com/ [zotlabs.com]
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday July 15 2019, @09:06PM
Twitter and other services have first mover advantages, huge marketing budgets, and low barriers to entry. 99% of Twitter (non-bot) users will only migrate to federated alternatives if a.) the onboard steps are equally easy and (showstopper) b.) the people they want are there.
Don't get me wrong, I want Zap/Friendica/Diaspora/Mastodon/Pleroma/SSB/Fritter/Akasha to conquer the world. But until we the free software community can solve both a.) and b.) it's a pipe dream.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 15 2019, @12:52PM (6 children)
The cognitive dissonance is interesting here. The only problem corporation here is the US government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @02:56PM (5 children)
Imagine a simple unprobable situation: USA Government does not stick their fingers to business.
What will change?
Government surveillance and censorship will be smaller.
What will not change?
Agenda-related surveillance and censorship will not change and still will be enforced. It may be even larger due to lack of regulations.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 16 2019, @09:05AM (4 children)
So what? All democracies are structured around division of power. There are many agendas while there aren't many governments. Thus, there is a considerable division of power in your latter scenario.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:06PM (3 children)
No! There is only one agenda, with one objective: To maximize profit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:22PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
You have said what the AC says enough, "their only responsibility is to profit for shareholders!"
You just can't accept that your world view is broken eh?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 17 2019, @09:08AM
Notice the use of the word "if" in my earlier post - I have not said what you claim I said. And that "if" was used because whether it is completely irrelevant whether the many "theirs" out there have similar motives or not - because there are so many more such parties, they will conflict with each other far more often on that basic profit motive.
Once again, there's far more shareholders and agendas than there are top level governments. It's a vast dilution of power and control - something that every working democracy does. So why again is it bad when we do it here? Why again are we supposed to lose our shit because there are private parties with a bit of power, which you can sue?
I find it remarkable just how ignorant the angst over business power is. It will even advocate causing considerable harm to our democracies in order to tilt at that windmill.