Inaccessibility Trend: Individual Twitter Pages
About two months ago, we enabled Herdict users to report on individual Web pages, rather than just top-level sites (e.g., “twitter.com/nawaat” vs. “twitter.com”). Since then, we’ve noticed a trickling of reports on individual inaccessible Twitter pages, in China, Bahrain and Tunisia.
The latest spate of inaccessible reports have been confirmed by the owners of some of the Twitter accounts, who say that their Twitter pages are no longer accessible in their own countries:
Although twitter.com/freebahrain has since been reported accessible (by the user) in Bahrain, one thing is clear: the governments of Tunisia and Bahrain have now demonstrated capability to block individual Twitter pages, thus silencing certain voices while still keeping a major communication platform open. Only time will tell if this is to become a trend globally.
About the Author: Jillian York
Jillian C. York is the Project Coordinator for the OpenNet Initiative and the part of the Herdict team that you should contact if you have any questions about other-language instances of the site or international press. She created most of the textual content on the site, so if you spot something funny, let her know! She's also the face behind the @Herdict Twitter feed.
