Censorship

I'm recently into twitter. I like it. It's an easy way of making a comment or statement on something that has happened or occured to me without having to write a whole blog post around it. I can also follow other people, some of which I know, some of which I know of, and some that just seem interesting.

Twitter as a source of information, or as a method of information transport is fantastic. In the time it takes to write a text message, your info can hit all your followers. They can then "re-tweet" it, with no effort, to all theirs. Information can reach hundreds of thousands of people in seconds.

Because of this reach, twitter can be, and is, used to rally individuals to a cause. "Click this to help out", "Re-tweet this to raise awareness". Etc. Now this works, but to work it has to be passive. You're not going to get people, who wouldn't normally have gone anyway, to go to a march for example. You're going to get bandwagon jumping of the simplest element of your crusade at best.

Which brings me to this: "it's the last day of #blackout today http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html yes, I'm not from/in NZ but supporting the protest "

The background to this is a daft piece of legislation in New Zealand. They, like others before them, want to censor the net. The details are a little different than previous attempts (China, North Korea, Australia) but the outcome will be the same. Failure. The internet is borderless, and the protocols too open for something like this to succeed. Encrypted proxies would be in place before you can say "Waste of legislative time".

However, there is a valid argument for protest. The bill is being proposed by a specific MP belonging to a specific party. By all means, write to these people, explain your problems with the legislation, point out the errors with the execution of it that will follow, and, if you're lucky, raise the issue for debate, and get your point across.

The site linked in that tweet above gives you the details to do just this. However, the page linked asks you to black out your twitter picture in protest. This is where I have an issue. What's the point!? All this does is make the little avatar that accompanies your tweet go black. Nothing else. This makes it slightly more difficult, at a glance, to see who has tweeted. Your name comes with the tweet, so it takes a little more effort. Nowhere do you have to justify your blackout. People will generally re-tweet something similar to the tweet above, and then move on. Tweeting as normal. No blog posts, no action, just a silly black picture.

Now, how many New Zealand politicians are quaking in their boots thanks to a few hundred blacked out pictures in twitter (and probably facebook)? None. What has this achieved? Nothing. An ill-conceived campaign bringing awareness to nothing. (The tweet above was in reply to someone asking why they were blacked out. I've seen dozens of these in the last couple of weeks. People don't "get it", there is no obvious connection).

So where does this get us? At best we stay as we were, a small number of people will campaign properly, and something may be done. If the bill passes it will fail, and, quietly, it'll be forgotten about. At worst, a bunch of people will have assumed they are doing something worthwhile when their efforts haven't even been noticed by those they were hoping to influence. I think that's a shame.