Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy

Re:Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy by mc32 on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @12:22PM (#3621636)

Saying that the suspended accounts were "unfavorable to Sarkozy" and that's the reason for suspension is stretching the truth --it politicizes something. Claiming it's Censorship (gov't) rather than censorship (non-gov'tal) appears to be untrue. I don't see where it was the French gov't which came down on Twitter. Twitter seems to have a policy against impersonation.

They make a call and that's about it. If you were to impersonate my Twitter account, I doubtt Twitter would care. If you were impersonate someone of notoriety (where lots of people could be influenced on misinformation) they probably would take action. That would seem very reasonable to me.

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Re:Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy by rickmb on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @12:45PM (#3621727)

Please. If an account is called @DehorsSarkozy, it's perfectly obvious to anyone that this is not impersonating anyone, at least not in any way misleading.

@_NicolasSarkozy I can understand, but suspending the others is completely ridiculous.

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Re:Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy by ephoz on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @12:35PM (#3621691)

Although Twitter did not take action for quite a while. They must have been waiting for the french elections, because they care so much about that...

Another note is that for a fake account (humorous or deceptive) to be deactivated, Twitter has to receive a complaint from the person (or a legal equivalent) being impersonated.

BTW, other candidates to the election still have active fake accounts.

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Re:Twitter suspends accounts unfavorable to Sarkozy by mc32 on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @12:44PM (#3621720)

>BTW, other candidates to the election still have active fake accounts.

Have they informed Twitter and has then Twitter failed to take action on that complaint?

>Although Twitter did not take action for quite a while.

Had Twitter received a complaint and not acted on it, or did they act on the complaint in a reasonable time-frame?

>They must have been waiting for the french elections, because they care so much about that...

Whoever is in charge of "media" by the personality in question (a French politician) probably didn't scour for impersonators till the campaign was ramping up, is my guess.

I mean, sure, there could be conspiracies. Maybe the French gov't made a deal with Twitter --who knows, I don't. Still, attributing malice where none is evident and it's all conjecture is not helping any. There seem to be simpler explanations.

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