ReadWriteWeb

Two anonymous twitterers in the American state of Pennsylvania - @bfbarbie and @CasablancaPA - tweeted harsh criticisms of the state's attorney general, Tom Corbett, who is a candidate for the governorship. On May 6, a grand jury in Harrisburg subpoenaed the identities and other information about the two users from Twitter.

The American Civil Liberties Union stepped in and sued on their behalf. The subpoena was subsequently dropped by Pennsylvania prosecutors.

As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, Facebook has a "crowd-sourced" way of handling complaints. If a certain number of users register complaints against another user, that user is automatically banned and his or her profile is locked down.

We were told by a public relations representative, Simon Axten, that "(t)he assumptions made in the blog post are false." (We weren't really assuming, but OK.) "We don't take any action on a user report until it has been investigated by our professional reviewers, and they have positively identified a violation of our policies." This is contradicted by the facts as we know them.

Well let's get straight to it, shall we?

ReadWriteWeb is banned in Tunisia. Additionally, groups of Islamists are targeting Facebook users and uniting to ban them. An attempted target of one of these groups was our own ReadWriteWeb France editor, Fabrice Epelboin.

I said last week that "When the level of evil plummets...I wonder, for instance, if Tinhorns the world over aren't taking the week off to apply neat's foot oil to their collection of rubber hoses." I had no idea how right I'd be.

Cuba arrests blogger Diana Virgen García. Garcia, who covers issues of free speech in Cuba, and supports the Ladies in White movement, was arrested on April 22. The next day she was "sentenced" to a year and eight months in prison for unannounced "charges."

When the level of evil plummets my skeptical nature always asserts itself. I wonder, for instance, if Tinhorns the world over aren't taking the week off to apply neat's foot oil to their collection of rubber hoses. We can hope not. But time will tell. And in the meantime, I suppose, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Grass roots, high tech protests in Indonesia make leadership nervous. 56,000 Indonesians protested via Facebook a statue of U.S. president, Barack Obama, in a Jakarta park. Officials took down the statue agreeing any such construction should honor an Indonesian. A filtering bill was withdrawn from the country's parliament also due to online protest. These are just two examples of pressure brought to bear online. However, a legacy of restricted speech and laws still on the books could be used to shut up the online masses and if history is any guide, they may well be used that way.

Eventually I'll test my thesis that says, "The bigger the product launch, the more social media users get banged in the tanty." (Pardon my French.) In the meantime, let's see how much ill was done by whom to people like you.

Facebook account removals criticized. Jillian York wrote an extensive examination of Facebook users around the world who have had their accounts closed out. "Facebook has not spoken publicly about how this process works, but my suspicion is that when a number of users report the same user, their profile is automatically disabled." If this is true, it's disturbing. Because it's mob rule.

During this, the Week of the iPad, governments across the globe found just enough time in between loading apps to squeak in some good old-fashioned evil. This evil included, but was not limited to, arrests and censorious legislation. Let's take a look at this Week in Online Tyranny, from the top.

Tunisia blocks another video site. The Tunisian government blocked YouTube and DailyMotion. What was left to block? Why, WAT.TV, of course. This one seems to have been blocked for hosting opposition videos.