Twitter not censoring updates with black bars after all
April 29th, 2008 |
Not sure how to handle this so editing my existing post. Did not want post to lead with misinformation. I had blogged that Twitter seemed to be censoring posts with black bars, but it turns out someone was playing a joke, which I foolishly fell for. Here is the original post:
Someone recently alerted me that Twitter seems to be censoring words it deems offensive in updates. Here’s an example:
I have removed the user’s name and avatar photo. The four black bars on the bottom line were added by Twitter. You can guess what was there. I find this very objectionable. All Twitter use is completely voluntary. If I don’t like someone’s language, I can easily stop following them.
Addendum: Ahh the speed of Twitter. Mike Keliher suggests that the black bars might have been inserted by the users as a joke, and pointed to this post. If that’s the case, I’ve fallen for it.
Addendum 2.0: The user who typed the update above informs me that he added the black bars as a joke. As a former reporter, I should have known to contact him first. Just shows you should not believe everything you see online.
Tags: twitter, black bars, censorship, obscenity
| Sphere This |
And I thought I was slick with all my HTML codes for foreign and specialzed symbols, like ♥
What is the HTML code for black bar?
I still like Text Flipper too, for upside down text, which Twitter renders.
Comment by vaspers — April 29, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
uoıuıdo ǝךqıɹɹoɥ ʎɯ uı pooɓ ʎʇʇǝɹd sʞɹoʍ ʇı puɐ ɹǝpunoɹɐ ɹǝddıךɟ ʇxǝʇ uɐɯɹǝɓ ɐ sı ǝɹǝɥ
Comment by vaspers — April 29, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Haha, we’ve all fallen for it. Hell, I’ve fallen for some of the dumbest pranks of all time!
Also, I love your site design. Really. It’s attention-grabbing and pulls me in.
Comment by gh0st_preacher — April 29, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
Don’t feel too bad. Plenty of people got sucked in by it. It was a prank between some Australian twitterers that took on a life of its own. I don’t think anyone really expected it to be taken seriously beyond a 5 minute joke (that admittedly got overplayed for several hours
).
Apparently the code is an extended ASCII character. I can’t tell you which one because I just copied and pasted it from other tweets at the time.
Comment by Shane — April 29, 2008 @ 5:21 pm
Why did I think you were somehow referring to a Juke Joint?
http://tinyurl.com/4xrsun
Comment by Sue Radd — April 29, 2008 @ 5:30 pm