Because this is a very, very, very big deal. Let me be clear: It's a big fucking deal. It's huge.
It was attacked in international waters. On board were a Nobel Peace Prize Laurette, a Swedish MP and three German MPs (members of parliament/congress). No one yet knows the fallout of this, but here in Europe, no one can talk about anything else.
Is there a precedent of Twitter censoring "Big Deal" words before? IIRC @ev actually recommended Al Jazeera's Gaza Twitter feed during last year's escalation there.
If anything, it's a case study in how conspiracy theories grow: Every Twitter user is familiar with these type of issues. However in this case Israel is involved, which gave rise to various suspicions of "censorship". When some people then reported the search working fine for them, the theory grew a "location-dependent" subtheory, and users were "reporting" blocked/unblocked per their location. No doubt, a month from now significant parts of the Internet will be referring to the "flotilla censorship" as a known fact.
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So why would Twitter censor the word?
There was a rumor they were because it wasn't showing up on the trending topics list despite it being a very trending topic.
Because this is a very, very, very big deal. Let me be clear: It's a big fucking deal. It's huge.
It was attacked in international waters. On board were a Nobel Peace Prize Laurette, a Swedish MP and three German MPs (members of parliament/congress). No one yet knows the fallout of this, but here in Europe, no one can talk about anything else.
Is there a precedent of Twitter censoring "Big Deal" words before? IIRC @ev actually recommended Al Jazeera's Gaza Twitter feed during last year's escalation there.
If anything, it's a case study in how conspiracy theories grow: Every Twitter user is familiar with these type of issues. However in this case Israel is involved, which gave rise to various suspicions of "censorship". When some people then reported the search working fine for them, the theory grew a "location-dependent" subtheory, and users were "reporting" blocked/unblocked per their location. No doubt, a month from now significant parts of the Internet will be referring to the "flotilla censorship" as a known fact.