I’ve been using Plurk recently and I like it. I had to find a new microblogging site after I decided to take a side in the Terms of Service (TOS) debate on Twitter. I personally found Twitter to be irresponsible in the matter and I made the personal decision to delete my Twitter account. I haven’t found a single person who also made this decision, but that’s why they call it a personal decision. This decision was made for many reasons, including excessive downtime of the Instant-Messanger feature, lack of use, and failure to support their TOS (at that time). This doesn’t mean I won’t go back to using Twitter if they improve their uptime and fully stand behind their TOS, it’s how I feel now.
First off, a little history. The whole Twitter TOS debate began after Ariel Waldman, a popular blogger, wrote a post about Twitter refusing to uphold their terms of service. The debate raged across the web, including on the Twitter topic site, for a few days and has since disappeared. This may be due to the myopic nature of the blogesphere, or it may be because nobody gives a shit.
Here’s my breakdown on the Twitter TOS debate. Twitter argues they are letting the community prosper and thrive and they choose not to censor. While I think that’s a noble stance, I find it pretty weak as an arguement, here is why. First off, unlike sites such as WikiPedia, the community can not remove offensive material. If I choose to write a nasty tweet, it’s out there in the public domain, and unless I choose to delete that tweet, it will stay in the public domain. This is both a good and bad thing. It means that if I write something about a company or person that I know to be true and can prove that it is true, but that company or person would rather not have the public know about it, they can’t remove it. It also means that if I write something that is false, and I know it to be false, it will remain in the public domain.
For instance, let’s say I write my truthful statement:
“Company X released three new products today. One new product will undercut their business model.”
Now that’s a pretty boring truth, but it’s true. It’s now out in the public domain, and people can find it in Google. Conversely, if I write:
“Company X kills babies with poisonous plastic poker chips.”
Now that’s a little more interesting, it’s false (and an example) and it’s also libel. If I continue to post false statements, which are in the public domain, about my fictitious company, it may be construed as harassment.
Back when I worked at TIME.com, management wanted to allow users to comment on magazine articles. We took the concept to the lawyers who told us no-way (but in nice lawyer terms). From what I understood at the time, this was because TIME.com would be responsible for any content written by a user because TIME.com owns the server space and the article was written for traditional media (a magazine). To this day, commenting is still not allowed on official articles from TIME or TIME.com, have a look here. Nytimes.com seems to have a similar outlook on the issue, they also don’t allow commenting on official newspaper articles, but do on their blogs.
What the TIME.com lawyers would allow is for blogs to be used, as long as the comments were moderated. Both Congress and the courts have enacted and enforeced laws to protect internet publishing. Wired posted an article back in 2003 that bloggers had gained protection from libel following an appeals court decision. In that article, Wired cited Zeran v. AOL, a case where AOL was not found responsible for the posting of it’s users, as well as two other cases: Gentry v. eBay and Schneider v. Amazon. In all these cases, the site could not be held responsible for the actions of their users. Twitter had firm legal ground to stand on should they be sued by Ariel who claimed harassment. Interestingly, the legal ground should they be sued by the so-called harasser for censorship is not so clear cut, which may be why they chose not to get involved.
Twitter wrote their official response on their company blog. It’s an interesting read. Like all debates, it has many sides (not just two) and this post reflects their view.
Regardless of your stance, or mine for that matter, on this debate, I have started using Plurk. I read a great article over on The Viral Garden on Twitter vs. Plurk. I dig the graphical interface on Plurk, and as I stated at the beginning of this post, I no longer use Twitter. But hey, I also dropped my MySpace account after Rupert Murdoch purchased it just because I disagree with his actions and publications. That’s the great thing about personal decisions, they are exactly that, which means you can either agree or disagree with mine, and that decision will be your personal decision. Oh yeah, you can find me on Plurk here.
