Monday, October 22, 2012





Nazi Twitter account silenced in Germany‏

Germans are clearly not as grown-up as Americans.  There are some naughty words that they must not hear unless they go berserk.  It's a wonder Germans are not embarrassed by such policies.

Twitter, for the first time since its launch in 2006, has blocked access to an account. German police call the neo-Nazi group that operates the account a criminal organization.  The Nazis' tweets are blocked only in Germany, under Twitter's policy of "country-withheld content," the New York Times reported, in a first for the company that, up to now, has been almost entirely hands-off in terms of regulating content.

German authorities, who banned the group Besseres Hannover ("Better Hanover") last month, asked Twitter to disable the account entirely, but Twitter's remedy still allows access to the Nazis' tweets outside of Germany.  The use of pro-Nazi rhetoric and symbols is illegal in Germany.

To some, Twitter's compromise with Germany represents a show of good will that could prevent a broader government crackdown on the service in the future, Gizmodo points out.

But to others, it’s a slippery slope: If Twitter will censor an account because a national government asks it to, what precedent and expectation does that set?  Would Twitter censor the "illegal" accounts of rebels or dissenters at the request of Libya or Iran?

Source



5 comments:

Bird of Paradise said...

The twitterbird needs to say no to NAZIS and COMMUNISTS both

Anonymous said...

Then the US should not have insisted on that de-nazification program in post-war Germany, and in contradiction to its own principles for which was supposedly the whole point of fighting in WWII.
But of course, that that war, or any other, had "principles" other than only geo-politics is to believe in Santa.

Anonymous said...

Germans are not evil people, and neither is their past. They simply had a minority of people who were evil. It's like the South in the United States. All Southerners are not evil, and neither is their past. They just had a minority of people who were evil.

Conversely, Muslims ARE evil, because in order to be a "good Muslim" who follows the teachings of the Koran, one MUST agree with the extermination of those who reject Islam, and that is pure evil.

Anonymous said...

6:29 Muslims could say the same about what is in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. But of course Jews and Christians pick and choose what's actually in the OT and NT, and many have never even read it all. So probably most Muslims are ignorant of their religion as a whole, and it's more a tribal/cultural/social thing.

Anonymous said...

The big difference is that the vast majority of Christians promote loving one another and reaching out to non-Christians. And Biblically, if a Christian cannot reach the non-Christian, he is to shake the dust off his feet when he leaves and moves on.

Muslims, on the other hand, only reach out with a sword destined for the non-Muslim's neck.