Postings from Todd: Occupy Wall Street Occupied by Censorship?

An interesting side story has been emerging from the Occupy Wall Street protests. As many of you probably know, the protests have been gaining steam over the last three weeks. Inspired and influenced by the Arab Spring protests in such Middle Eastern countries as Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the Occupy Wall Street protests have been organized through the internet and especially through social media. Though the conditions in the Middle East might have been more extreme, it is still an interesting point in history to see Americans inspired by the use of technology in an area of the world that is usually stereotyped as behind-the-times and medieval in its customs.

Though the protests have utilized technology and social media to organize a collection of widely varying groups with their own separate agendas, it has become a growing concern among some in the movement that technology might be inhibiting the protestors’ organization abilities. First off, many inside the movement have alleged, and many major news organizations have reported, that Yahoo blocked emails mentioning the protests from being sent. Though Yahoo claims that this was an inadvertent mistake they have since remedied, many bloggers and members of the protest community have claimed foul play. One can’t help but question what Yahoo’s true intentions here were. Remember, Yahoo is a publicly traded stock.

An even more interesting (and perhaps frightening) claim being made by some bloggers is against that revered tool of democracy during the Arab Spring: Twitter. Bloggers have claimed that Twitter has, on two separate occasions, prevented the hash tag #OccupyWallStreet from being a top trending topic on their homepage, even though the tag received more tweets than others that were ranked higher. Many people sight the fact that JP Morgan Chase invested around $400 million into Twitter back in March, as a reason that Twitter is “censoring” Occupy Wall Street’s communications. Whether these allegations are true or not, it’s important to keep in mind that even social media networks have corporate interests of their own. Always keep these in mind when exploring and studying social media and its effects.