FLASH! As of about 1:40 PDT, Monday, June 11, 2012, the @IAm_Pakistan project is now back online. See @MeeraGhani’s tweet:

https://twitter.com/MeeraGhani/statuses/212283536567308289

So, thank you Twitter, very much! We’d still like to know what happened and why, so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again to other Rotation Curation projects.

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO SIGNED THE PETITION. THIS WAS THE FIRST CASE (and last, we hope) OF ROTATION CURATION CENSORSHIP AND, AS A RESULT, THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION OF ROTATION CURATION POWER.

THE DEMONSTRATION AT TWITTER HQ IS CALLED OFF!

The following will be left in place for a few days for residual reference and then it will be archived.

Twitter is well known and widely respected as a company for its adherence to the principals of freedom of expression and free speech.

On January 28, 2011, Twitter wrote a post on its blog entitled The Tweets Must Flow:

Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential. Some Tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don’t always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.

The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. This is both a practical and ethical belief. On a practical level, we simply cannot review all one hundred million-plus Tweets created and subsequently delivered every day. From an ethical perspective, almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.

The entire basis of the #RotationCuration movement is predicated on Twitter resolutely upholding these freedom of expression ideals.

On June 3, 2012, however, with no warning and no explanation, Twitter suspended the @IAm_Pakistan account.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 27, 2012, in What Does Twitter’s Country-by-Country Takedown System Mean for Freedom of Expression?, Twitter will only suppress content for IP addresses within a specific country when asked to do so by the specific country and only for legal reasons local to that country. Beyond this, “Twitter is taking two additional steps to ensure that users know that the censorship has happened. First, they are giving users notice when they seek that content. Second, they are sending the notices they receive to the Chilling Effects Project, which publishes the orders, creating an archive.”

But in the case of @IAm_Pakistan there has been no notice and there has been nothing posted to the Chilling Effects Project database.

@IAm_Pakistan is a valued member of the #RotationCuration movement. Along with @IndigenousX, it had begun the valuable service of opening up the #RotationCuration movement to expressing the life experiences of non-western cultures.

If you agree that #RotationCuration is an important new evolution in global communications, cultural exchange, and world understanding, only made possible by unfettered access to the Twitter platform, please sign the petition below.

This petition will have a much better chance of success if it is signed by many people. Please, if you are willing to sign it, take it upon yourself to find two other people to sign it also — friends, family, Facebook contacts, etc. And please make sure they will actually sign it, don’t just send it to them and let it go at that. Thank you so much!

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = Free @IAm_Pakistan Petition = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

TWITTER, we, the undersigned, respectfully but urgently demand
that you uphold your policy of freedom of expression and reinstate
the @IAm_Pakistan #RotationCuration account immediately.
•
If Twitter does not reinstate @IAm_Pakistan, or provide a
credible reason for its inaction, with my signature below, I support
a public demonstration outside the Twitter Headquarters offices
(795 Folsom Street, San Francisco) on Friday, June 15 at noon.
Whether or not I am able to be physically present at the demonstration,
I understand that my name will be included in a printout of this petition
and delivered to the Twitter offices at the culmination of the demonstration.

•••

(Petition signators list no longer displayed)