Image: courtesy of @AnonymousTibet
Something very strange is happening to a Twitter account run by @AnonymousTibet, (AT) the cause of which is uncertain, but before we continue here’s what we’ve learned from our colleagues @tibettruth. Seems that last month the anonymous account posted a video about activism targeting Chinese regime websites. They also tweeted to a few followers with an interest in Tibet an update on Tibetan Independence Day, which falls on February 13.
On that same day they were locked out of their account and despite several appeals and direct explanations it took a week to regain access. They received emails from Twitter Support apologizing for the inconvenience and acknowledging that their algorithms had wrongly interpreted AT as being a spam-bot.
Yay! Case closed and thanks to a whole lot of support from people across Twitter their account was again up and running. But wait a minute, when they logged in something was missing, only their 2000 plus followers! What’s more anyone trying to follow AT were being blocked from doing so! Meanwhile their emails and tweets to @TwitterSupport to help fully restore their account are being ignored, and at the time of this post the situation remains unresolved.
What is going down here? Is this administrative oversight by Twitter, or something darker? Are we seeing once again censorship? Has China exerted its suffocating influence once again? Whatever the facts it’s very worrying to see an account dedicated to human rights, justice and freedom being effectively banned. The only party which would welcome such a censorship is that of China’s regime!
We trust that Twitter will do the right thing here and lift the restrictions imposed upon @AnonymousTibet and restore their followers, anything else places into question their commitment to freedom-of-speech.
Digital Activism Im Support Of Tibetan Independence 