Blog Posts by ONI

Indonesia and its Porn Troubles

Alex Fayette — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:43:01 -0400

After the online release of the “Peterporn” sex tapes earlier this summer in Indonesia, the government there began panicked talk of Internet censorship to stop this kind of material from appearing for dissemination once more.

Even though this predominantly Muslim nation already has anti-pornography laws in place which permit the government to prosecute offenders who post these prohibited materials online, this deterrent has been deemed ineffective after this recent rash of releases.

With a recent article out of the Jakarta Post and another out of the New York Times, this situation is now hitting the global spotlight.

Now along with the support of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was once hesitant about enacting any sort of mass censorship, a new filtration plan has been thrown together in a haphazard way that looks to be neither organized nor sustainable.

The government is placing the filtration burden on the ISPs and public access points to the Internet, like cyber cafes. Surprisingly, there has been little-to-no objection from the Indonesian service providers except for concerns over the technical feasibility of the filtration. The government slapped a target date for the blockage of porn sites to become active before the Muslim holy fasting period of Ramadan. With it starting on August 11th this year, the preparation period for these filters was only about one month.

As one might suspect, this has proven to be a challenge.

According to reports out of Indonesia, there is not even a government black-list of sites yet. Even with one, the expectation is that they will only be able to target the “famous” pornographic sites which, naturally, is only a small percentage of the overall pornographic content available over the Internet. On top of that, the governmental order to take this action was sent out in a shockingly unorganized manner. There actually is no “official” order for this action yet, and it seems like there has been little specificity as to how each ISP or internet cafe should try to block the sites.

This is no Great Firewall of Indonesia. It is more like the Great Fence instead (some aprts may be metal; others, white-picketed).

While many free speech and Internet rights activists both in Indonesia and abroad have expressed concern of the government asking for pornographic filtration, this instance has actually been a rare case where public support for some type of action has been quite vocal. A public backing of a censorship policy may help this Internet barrier become a reality, but the naivete of the government, with its disorganization and unrealistic goals, may be the brick that thankfully slips out of these plans to make the Internet a more closed place for Indonesia.

As August 11th rolls around next week, careful attention should be given to this situation, especially to see the response to, what most are predicting will be, a failure of the filtering plan.

United Arab Emirates Arrests Activists, Bans BlackBerry Services

Sarah Hamdi — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:12:24 -0400

On July 29th, Reporters Sans Frontiers reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrested one BlackBerry user, detained another, and are pursuing five activists. The activists were planning a protest via BlackBerry Messenger against the increasing price of gasoline, and, unable to get a special permit from security forces for the protest, the protestors called off their peaceful demo so as not to break the law. Despite this, authorities pursued them; they tracked down and interrogated the organizer through his BlackBerry PIN ("Saud"), and detained 18-year old BBM user Badr Ali Saiwad Al Dhohori on the 15th of July.

In the wake of these arrests, the UAE announced today that it will suspend BlackBerry Services to clients starting October 11th, citing security concerns. This includes BlackBerry messenger, e-mail, and web browsing services.

BlackBerry as a National Security Threat?

Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) argues that the government acted in this manner because of the UAE's insecurity of being able to gain access to BlackBerry data (which is encrypted):

"Because they cannot decipher BlackBerry’s encrypted data and thereby gain accesss to its clients’ personal data, the security forces have decided to intimidate users in order to combat their potential for disseminating information."

BlackBerrys, which were introduced to the UAE in 2006, are not covered under Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) policy, which covers internet access, amongst other things. A week before the arrest of "Saud", the TRA publicly accused BlackBerry of being a potential threat to national security because "the devices operate beyong the jurisdiction of national laws and open to misuse" and user data is sent to foreign network servers. Apparently this has been a long-standing concern, since Etisalat tried to covertly put surveillance software of users' BlackBerry's in 2009, disguising it as an "upgrade...required for service enhancements".

The UAE's Restrictive Online Environment

The UAE is a generally restrictive environment for social justice activists. The government routinely monitors the press, and current media law allows for the imprisonment of journalists and publication suspension, so self-censorship is common. The Internet is also monitored; it is regulated by the TRA (Telecommunications REgulatory Authority), who produce the IAM (Internet Access Management) policy. The IAM determines what content categories ISPs should block, including pornography, and content about terrorism, gambling, learning criminal skills/hacking, and unlicensed VoIP services.

OpenNet Initiative testing for 2008/2009 showed that more U.A.E content was being censored online since the previous testing. This is most likely due to the implementation of the IAM policy by major ISPs Du and Etisalat, and the use of SmartFilter content filtering software.

In addition to the content types mentioned above, testing revealed that the UAE also censors political content, such as:

UAE Torture (uaetorture.com) which had videos of a UAE royal family member torturing an Afghan businessman;
SaveZackShahin (savezackshahin.com), an online campaign calling for release of U.S. citizen Zack Shahin;
UAE arab blog Mujarad Ensan because of content that was critical of the socioeconomic situation in the UAE; and
secularislam.org for having non-normative views of islam

They have in the past also blocked access to social networking websites, such as LiveJournal, YouTube, Skype, MetaCafe, Myspace, and Flickr (to which access is still blocked).

Read the full country profile.

Emirati Netizens Under Threat

The UAE BlackBerry arrests are not surprising, considering both the online environment that exists in the country, and because the UAE has in the past arrested people for their online activities. Khaled El Asli and Mohammed Rashed Al-Sohhi were both arrested in in 2007 because of their association to majan.net; Asli was sentenced to one year in prison for defaming a local official on the website, and the site was pulled down by authorities. The government has also placed some Internet cafes under investigation for allowing their users to use VoIP services.

Part of Global Trend

In the US a landmark law was passed this month allowing smartphone users to modify their product in any way they desire. Amongst other things, this law is significant because it suggests that what you do with your phone, and how you use it, is up to you.

Not all governments feel this way, and the UAE is not the only government to react strongly to BlackBerry. Their actions are part of a regional trend in the South that sees BlackBerries as standing in the way of government surveillance of its users - The Indian government has demand that Research In Motion (the company that owns BlackBerry) set up a proxy server in the country so security agencies can monitor e-traffic. Meanwhile Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Saudi Arabia has also suspended BBM, and Bahrain already banned users from "sharing local news...to avoid confusion and chaos" on April 9th of this year.

Chinese Plans To Deanonymize The Internet

Alex Fayette — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:55:40 -0400

Despite the press attention being thrown at the China/Google relationship, there has been another issue in China brewing a little more subtly in the background that may cause further open access issues in a nation already struggling with Internet freedom.

News stories have been circulating since May of this year about the Chinese government’s possible plan to deanonymize substantial pieces of the Internet in China. It now seems from recent reports that this prospect is indeed on the restrictive government’s agenda.

In a speech given by Wang Chen (Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department in the Communist Party of China), he briefly outlined a new drive to register cellphone users with identifiable information, and force commentators on message boards to use real names; a deep and measurable attack on anonymity. The press has dwelled on the privacy side of this new issue, but they have thus failed to show how a policy like this can damage free-speech in a way that ultimately attacks open Internet practices as well.

In the news focused on Internet censorship and filtration around the globe, most of the discussion centers on active censorship methods like IP address blocking. What gets less press though, and arguably has more impact on Internet freedoms and speech, are social conditions that lead to self-censorship. In China’s case, the notorious pattern of prosecution and imprisonment of those who speak out against the communist regime has forced many to remain silent on issues they care about. The fear for personal well-being and the well-being of those close to them has forced many to simply not use the Internet to communicate in some ways that they’d like to. This becomes de facto Internet censorship.

An outlet that helps enable some people to become “less censored” is the ability to communicate anonymously through a variety of digital channels. While anonymous speech sits in a space of much controversy, where it’s ability to be used for purposes of good are often opposed by people abusing the privilege (or should it be “right”?) of some anonymity, it has been shown historically to play a pivotal role in helping people gain new freedoms and rights.

It may be this history that China doesn’t want to repeat.

As an interesting aside, there were two releases of the transcript of Mr. Chen’s speech, with the latter being a revision in which substantial pieces of the statements have been removed. The section regarding this new policy was one of those that was removed. It is unclear what that means at this point, but it surely does not ease anybody’s concerns.

By stripping away anonymous content from key Chinese commercial and news sites, China would be effectively adding another brick to its “Great Firewall” to further discourage any opposition to government policy. If this is continued to only be address through the language of privacy though, rather than through Internet censorship as well, specifically self censorship, then this issue may pass under the radar for much of world as they focus their attentions to other bricks in this ever-growing wall.

Turkish Citizens Take To The Streets Over Internet Freedoms

Alex Fayette — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:34:35 -0400

Outrage and concern finally boiled over in Istanbul on Saturday as thousands took to the streets in protest of Turkey’s Internet Censorship policy.

Physical protests of Internet policy are really a never-before-seen occurance, even with all the twists and turns of cyberspace regulation that have occurred in the past decade. While the protests thankfully remained peaceful, they drove home a strong point of disapproval to the Turkish government that will hopefully be heard and acknowledged.

The direct law in question is number 5651 which is the foundation for Turkish Internet censorship policy. This law has been a launching point for a concerning increase in censorship in the past few years. From the initial ban of YouTube in 2007 all the way through the wide-spread IP blocking that crippled Google services in Turkey, politicians have used this law as a crutch to support any claim trying to limit Internet access for Turkish citizens.

This is not the first time though that this law has been met with challenges from within Turkey. Earlier this summer, hackers launched an Internet attack against some government websites that represented the organizations responsible for the censorship. The most shocking protest was actually just before that, when the President of Turkey himself Tweeted his disapproval of the ways that Turkey was censoring the net.

This rise in frequency of protests for Turkey is really unexpected and nothing quite like it has yet happened in other nations who practice Internet censorship. There is substantial hope that this increase in the vocalization of dislike towards the current policies will incite some change and that other nations with similar policies will start to experience similar responses from their citizens. Whether or not this most recent protest will catalyze change in Turkey is unclear, but the Turkish government needs to take this historic event seriously unless it wants to see its people get even angrier and take more rash means of protest. As it stands though, the people of Turkey deserve substantial respect for their ability to continue to peacefully yet firmly express their anger through protest and we can only hope that the government becomes more realistic with its views on censoring the web.

Would Censoring the Internet Prevent Cyber-Bullying?

Jillian C. York — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:01:37 -0400

Playing out in the Internet tabloids this week is the story of Jessi Slaughter, an eleven-year-old girl whose YouTube rants have resulted in death threats and unsavory rumors in a classic case of cyber-bullying.

In Australia, where a proposal to filter the Internet has been volleyed on and off the table for the past few years, a recent op-ed argues that filtering the Internet could potentially protect young people like Slaughter, who "isn't aware of what she's doing."

Filtering proponents in Australia have long argued that the mechanism is necessary to protect children, whose parents may not be aware of the dangers of the Internet, or may not use computers at all. One proposal in Australia would give schools the right to respond to student's activities on the net outside school hours.

A rebuttal to the argument appeared in Gizmodo's Australia edition, with the author, Nick Broughall, arguing that "no filter in the world would help Jessi Slaughter." Broughall maintains that parents should play a strong role in children's Internet activities, and that a filter would not impact content such as Slaughter's video, as it was hosted on YouTube, a site that would not be blocked under the proposed Australian filtering scheme.

New Legislation With Hidden Consequences

Alex Fayette — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:49:30 -0400

In U.S. Bill HR 4899 (Full Text Here), there are supplemental appropriations of around $80 Billion towards the troops in Afghanistan, Haiti relief, the Gulf oil spill, employment issues with the recession, and snuck in at the very end, a porn filter clause.

In Chapter 6 Section 4601(a), the clause reads as such,

“None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to maintain or establish a computer network unless such network blocks the viewing, downloading, and exchanging of pornography.”

The bill has already cleared the House and the Senate, and is now just awaiting the signature of President Obama to become law. Surprisingly, few people have even given this single sentence a second, cursory glance.

It’s hard not to be rubbed the wrong way with this, seeing as there has been massive global concern over nationally mandated Internet filters in countries like Australia and China, where pornography is put high on a list of content that should be filtered out. But while those acts of carving up open Internet access have taken place mostly in laws of their own, where focus is placed on the issue, it seems that the US government is trying to slice-and-dice into the open net with some subtlety and, dare I say, deceit.

Government systems frequently have some sort of filter on them, often blocking access to social networking sites and alike, and similarly, public schools frequently take similar measures. This bill does not seem to be limited to government owned and operated computers though, but rather, it expands onto outside organizations or groups that are receiving money via this appropriation. The language is so nebulous that even simple saying "maintain[ing] or establish[ing] a computer network" leaves much room for this filter to be imposed.

So why is this piece of content limitation here?

At its source, it doesn’t seem to fall into a category of Right-wing conservativism, limiting “socially reprehensible” materials, since its sponsor is Representative David Obey, a Democrat. This bill also isn’t trying out any sort of government filter, since there is no specificity as to how the filter be implemented. Thus, it is assumed that any filtration would be run by the recipient of the bill’s money, and any “big-brother” government pornographic black-list would be avoided.

Assuming that this clause is there for a purpose, there is really only one reasonable possibility left, that this could be a test case for similar policies being tagged onto future bills. Considering the nature of the rest of this bill, it was almost guaranteed to pass the House and Senate, and considering the dearth of objections or amendments, Obama will most surely sign it into law. It is that kind of bill that is perfect for trying out a small idea that could be politically objectionable......

This bill will likely pass, and this pornographic filtration policy will slide along with it, but as this happens, all ears should be to the ground to see what happens next. Activists and citizens concerned about open Internet access in the U.S. should ask questions of their lawmakers to see what the government position really is on this issue. Will these filters even be enforced, or not? Will more filtration clauses like this start appearing in other bills in the future as well? And on a philosophical note, what even is the government’s definition of pornography here (since there is no concise, legal definition)?

Hopefully, the lawmakers know what they’ve just approved and can justify and rationalise it when questions are finally raised. For many Americans though, this back-door approach just pulled the wool over their eyes.

MZ, call your office: Facebook’s Zuckerberg may face criminal charges in Pakistan

Ellery Biddle — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:44:40 -0400

The International Herald Tribune reported Saturday that Attorney Muhammad Azhar Siddique is petitioning the Lahore High Court of Pakistan to re-open a First Information Report (FIR) registered against Facebook executives in May. The report was sealed and investigations ended after Facebook removed the “Draw Mohammad Day” group that ignited controversy within the global Muslim community and led some religious leaders to call for its removal. If the court decides to re-open the FIR, this would effectively re-initiate a criminal investigation of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with co-founders Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Siddique filed his petition citing Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code, which prohibits “blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad,” an offense punishable by death in some cases. He has also called for the court to bring the case to the UN, reasoning that Zuckerberg and company have violated Article 20.2 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “[a]ny advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” The court has yet to respond to Siddique’s petition. If it should choose to do so, it will bring the case to Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization. If Interpol were to accept the case, its representatives would then attempt to negotiate a warrant for Zuckerberg’s arrest with federal police authorities in the US.

Photo mosaic of Mark Zuckerberg created by Charis Tsevis. Based on a photo by Marcio José Sánchez of Associated Press.

Lebanese Facebook Users Arrested for Defaming President

Sarah Hamdi — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:20:52 -0400

On June 28th, The Guardian, Menassat, L'Orient Le Jour, and the AFP reported that Lebanon arrested 3 individuals (Naim George Hanna, Antoine Youssef Ramia, Shebel Rajeh Qasab), and Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza issued an arrest warrant for a fourth (Ahmed Ali Shuman). They were all students in their early 20's, and were placed under arrest for slander and defamation of President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. Currently, the first three have been released on bail of 100,000 L.L. each ($66.65 USD) and are expected to be tried later in Beirut with no news of the fourth suspect, according to NOW Lebanon.

Their posts are no longer available on Facebook (the AFP indicates that they were removed). No notice about who removed them is available - whether it was Facebook, an individual/the authors, or another institution is unknown. However, the Guardian reports that the comments, which were re-posted on President Suleiman's official Facebook fan page included harmless gems like "You're worth my foot," "you're like a snake; all you do is from under the table," and "the king of racism and sectarianism."

In an open letter to the President, blogger pinkfloyed rightfully expressed outrage that the government chose to waste resources on this, considering all the other domestic issues worth of governmental attention and action, such as widespread poverty and Israeli military presence in Lebanon. In protest, a petition has been circulating online, to Protect Free Speech in Lebanon, with up to 139 signatures as of July 6th.

However, this is not the first time that Lebanon has harassed a netizen for defaming the President. Threatened Voices reported that on March 15, Lebanese blogger and journalist Khodor Salameh was interrogated by Lebanese security forces and threatened with arrest "unless he changed his tone" regarding criticizing the president.

It is telling that these events occur in the wake of upcoming parliamentary voting on a Lebanese e-Transaction law. The law, which activists fought and succeeded in postponing voting on, would legitimize the surveillance of Internet users through regulation of ISPs, as well as limit their ability to communicate by preventing the use of VOIP services. Government monitoring of bloggers and other Internet users becomes especially concerning in light of these arrests.

While Lebanon is frequently considered liberal in terms of freedom of speech (see the Global Freedom of Speech Index) and contains no evidence of Internet filtering (ONI Country Report), these incidents are significant because they indicate the lack of transparency about the limits of Lebanese liberalism. There is apparently a ceiling that these individuals hit which is not explicitly legally defined, as The Guardian notes: "Since these insults were made online – where Lebanese law doesn't yet reach – that ceiling is only as high as the president deems appropriate." This sentiment was further reinforced by Justice Minister Najjar who defended the decision of the Prosecutor when he stated that "media freedom in Lebanon and any civilized country reaches its limits when the content is pure slander and aims at undermining the head of state."

If the results of this case prove Najjar’s statement right, it might have dire consequences for Lebanese bloggers and other Internet users’ freedom of speech online. This is particularly true if the Lebanese e-Transaction bill gets voted and signed into law, legitimizing government surveillance of Lebanese internet users.

Honduras: one year after the military coup, press freedom remains under siege

Ellery Biddle — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:06:21 -0400

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the military coup d’état that drove now former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power. Since January of 2010, eight journalists have been assassinated, making Honduras the most dangerous country for journalists working in Latin America, and many radio and TV stations, serving local and national audiences, have been closed. In July of 2009, the de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, officially suspended civil liberties including press freedom and the freedom of assembly. In September, military troops forcibly closed the offices and seized the equipment of news organizations critical of the coup, including Radio Globo, Canal 36 and its radio subsidiary, and Radio Coco Dulce. Hours after the offices of Radio Globo were closed, station employees relocated to a private home and began live streaming its broadcasts online.

In an interview with Reuters, Radio Globo Director David Romero commented [ES]:

Nos prohíben usar la frecuencia de radio, pero no la internet. Este es un espacio no regulado…[u]na vez que la gente se dio cuenta que estábamos por internet fue como la bola de nieve comunicada por mensajes de celular. Todo el mundo comenzó a sintonizarlos en la red.

[EN]: They’ve prohibited us from using the radio waves, but not the Internet. This is an unregulated space…as soon as people realized that we were on the Internet, there was snowball effect as the news spread via text message. Everyone started tuning in online.

Since the November election of current President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, a coup supporter, rule of law has technically been restored, but official limitations on press freedom have remained in place, and violations of human rights and civil liberties have continued. This has brought massive repercussions for media outlets throughout the country, as journalists continue to face threats of kidnapping, torture, and assassination, crimes that have not been thoroughly investigated by police authorities. Although the Internet has provided a vital alternative for news organizations to continue operating, ONI experts fear that it may become subject to political filtering in the near future.

#iranelection Censored? Evaluating Twitter's Trending Topics

Sarah Hamdi — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:56:45 -0400

Written in collaboration with Devin Gaffney.

Following the anniversary of the Iran election protests on June 12th, Iranian reform protesters began accusing Twitter of censoring #iranelection when the hashtag did not trend on the site that day. Some protestors went so far as to create a Twitition calling for Twitter to "Get Rid of Censorship for #Iranelection", signed by 110 signatories (as of June 18th, 2010).

Justifying their claim for censorship, the Twitition claimed that #iranelection was surpassing the number of tweets for the top Trending Topics yet still not appearing on the list:

"That day the top Trending Topics included FIFA World Cup and #worldcup as well as the oil crisis and some media stars. However, as we researched further we found that #iranelection WAS PRODUCING UP TO TEN TIMES THE AMOUNT OF TWEETS PER MINUTE THAN ANY OF THE OTHER SO-CALLED TOP Trending Topics!!"

#iranelection vs. #WorldCup vs. Bieber

To investigate the issue, we ran some informal testing, comparing the number of tweets between #iranelection, #worldcup and Bieber (as a contemporary high Twitter volume constant) to see how they compared.

A two-hour long streaming API data collection was performed for the three terms on the early afternoon of Friday, June 18th for a duration of two hours. To be fair, this was a full 6 days following the Iran Election's anniversary, so data may be significantly different - what is clear, however, is that the World Cup is getting much more attention on Twitter than the Iran Election. Additionally, whereas many people seemed to be talking World Cup, only a few people participated in #iranElection tweets, and did so very vocally. As a general overview, the data suggest that the claims in the Twitition claims are likely an exaggeration, and in fact, World Cup deservedly received Trending Topic status. Here's a summary of our results:

#WorldCup: 33,166 Tweets spread across 23,396 Users
Bieber: 10,730 Tweets spread across 7,101 Users
#iranelection: 897 Tweets spread across 133 Users

Essentially, this suggests a small number of persons employing #iranelection many times over, and a much larger organically generated #WorldCup population tweeting much more heavily than even Bieber fans themselves. In a much more detailed review, the data clearly suggests that the claims made in the Twitition are largely groundless based on metrics such as account creation dates and time-zone distributions, as well as raw data volume and the nature of the tweets themselves (There was a surprisingly low occurrence of "conversational" tweets (either "re-tweets" or "direct mention" tweets) in the #iranelection data set).

How Do Trending Topics Get Decided?

Trending Topics, for those unfamiliar with the term, are the top 10 words (or phrases) being discussed on Twitter at any point. Twitter did not actually include Trending Topics until April 30th, 2009, a few months after their purchase of the analytics company Summize, Inc. Trending Topics are a result of Summize's initial algorithm and the subsequent improvements. The meanings behind those topics is drawn from WhatTheTrend, which crowd-sources definitions for Trending Topics from its user base. Words like "the" and "and"...etc are excluded, as their volume is likely the highest. Until recently, the Trending Topics favored raw volume for a topic over the immediacy of that volume - if, for example, the term "J-Biebs" had a constant rate of 10,000 tweets per minute, it would appear higher in the list of candidates for Trending Topics than something like "Earl of Sandwich", which for one reason or another jumped from 1 tweet per hour to 5,000 tweets per minute over the course of five minutes.

As of May 14th, the Trending Topics are no longer just the simple volume of traffic - although the algorithm itself is not disclosed, it is now more dependent on the immediacy or dynamic change of data over time. In Twitter's words, "Twitter is about what is happening right now," and "the hottest emerging trends and topics of discussion on Twitter are the most interesting."

As a product of unfortunate timing, the gigantic and all-powerful Bieber fan population, noticing the change in the algorithm, accused Twitter of censoring Bieber-based Tweets. This shift in the algorithm was to blame, Twitter argued, and this example demonstrated the potentially new ways to think of Trending Topics. Since then, Twitter users have been crying foul when the Trending Topic list does not include their topic, such as #iranelection or when Twitter was accused of censoring #Flotilla when it began to trend on May 30th, 2010

However, these concerns are not unfounded. Twitter does intervene to remove some topics, such as racist Trending Topic #thingsdarkiessay in November 2009, a move which reportedly angered some South African users.

So Then What Topics Get Trended?

In the scope of the data collection analyzed above, we could then posit some other possible factors into a trending topic status - volume alone does not likely lead to Trending Topics, but the organic volume as a result of a broad user base. If, for example, a few accounts suddenly pushed numerous Tweets into the system as fast as possible, all with some similar term, even if they looked completely organic, they would probably be omitted or at least weighted down by some factor of the number of users talking about that subject. In the case of the #WorldCup conversation, the relatively even ratio of Tweets to users is more suggestive of a dynamic conversation. The more imbalanced ratio in the #iranElection conversation, then, is more suggestive of a conversation guided by a few users with a clear agenda to push more traffic for the given topic.

Arguably, more concerning then potential political filtering by Twitter is the increased commercialization of a social network that has prided itself on being "a platform for you to influence what’s being talked about around the world". Recently, Twitter began considering letting advertisors insert their own topics into the Trending Topics; essentially selling Trending Topic space so advertiser's terms could emerge as popular topics on Tweeter's homepages and sidebars. This, in essence, would give the highest bidder the power to determine what trends on Twitter, suggesting that Twitter is open to tampering with the Trending Topics algorithm under certain circumstances. Twitter already offers advertisers Promoted Tweets, where relevant advertiser's tweets are pushed to the top of the list when a user does a search on Twitter.