Open Letter to Biz Stone, Twitter Co-Founder and Creative Director

Dear Biz Stone:

I've been following the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag on Twitter for over two weeks, and I've noted some disturbances on certain evenings, such as my hashtag search unexpectedly changing to another topic altogether. This happened repeatedly, and I found it somewhat frustrating and odd...Yes, odd. Would Twitter be doing this intentionally to thwart protest efforts on Wall Street? I also found it strange that #OccupyWallStreet was not appearing in the trending topics....

My suspicions were substantiated this morning in a report by Danny Schechter on Al Jazeera:

On at least two occasions, Saturday September 17 and again on Thursday night, Twitter blocked #OccupyWallStreet from being featured as a top trending topic on their homepage. On both occasions, #OccupyWallStreet tweets were coming in more frequently than other top trending topics that they were featuring on their homepage.

If Schechter's source is right, then this would be a highly hypocritical move, as on June 15, 2009, at 7:00 pm EST, you posted a letter on the Twitter blog in which you "postponed" a critical network upgrade because of Twitter's role in Iran's Green Revolution.

In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.
In other words, supporting protests in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Spain and Britain are fine, but when it comes to the U.S., you adopt a Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) approach. Or was it because you did not want to offend your benefactors--JP Morgan Chase, who reportedly gave your company a $400-million investment.

I agree with Mr. Schechter's source: this is blatant political censorship. It's time to put your money where your mouth is. Let Occupy Wall Street evolve into the movement it was meant to be, just as you gave free rein to all the other resistance movements around the world.

Yours sincerely,
Heather

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