Help Thy Neighbor? Not on Twitter's Watch.

The saying goes that “there’s a sucker born every minute.” To be sure, Internet security research officer Mikko Hyppönen knows this better than most. Hyppönen recently “tweeted” to his followers, “I guess somebody will fall for it...a desperate Myspace phishing site at www. rnyspece.com. (don’t go there).” Surprisingly, Twitter didn’t take too kindly to Mr. Hyppönen’s warning, and suspended his account in order to protect users from a “malware URL” for what I will coin as an “Internet eternity”—sixty days.

Twitter has pioneered a new and potentially unsettling policy by disabling the accounts of those who wish to warn others of harm.

If Twitter’s actions seem perplexing to you, they should. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have made headlines in the past by enforcing restrictions on nefarious users such as registered sex offenders. While some might contend that the Internet should be an unregulated forum for all, these restrictions have served, at least, a legitimate purposes in that they protect young users (a controversy in its own right) from those who might seek to exploit them, while protecting the parent company from liability.

Twitter, on the other hand, has pioneered a new and potentially unsettling policy by disabling the accounts of those who wish to simply warn others of possible harm. Further, the company offered little, if any support for its reasoning. At best, the company was slow and simply incorrect in removing a tweet which did no harm (in Twitter’s defense it eventually reinstated the posting as well as Mr. Hyppönen’s account). At worst, Twitter has enacted a new policy which disallows members from even warning others of possible threats to avoid any liability which it might assume.

If the worst is at least a plausible scenario, which I contend that it is, we must ask whether or not Twitter has made an acceptable policy decision for its users. In Twitter’s own words, its service is meant to help users “discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” A simple example might illustrate the flaws in Twitter’s troubling new policy, and why it might be inconsistent with its stated mission. Suppose my neighbor knew of a fire happening down the street. Presumably under the restrictions applied to Mr. Hyppönen, a tweet warning the surrounding community of such an event would be invalid. Although this outcome seems laughable, consider also that Mr. Hyppönen was an expert in the field in which he was reporting. What if a local police department tweeted on a nearby robbery in progress? Would Twitter protect its users from seeking out this harm, even with a disclaimer explicitly advocating against this action? Moreover, whom is Twitter protecting by prohibiting this speech? It seems as if those who would use Twitter to protect themselves and others are sacrificed for those who would wish to make themselves the proverbial sucker.

The answer to whether or not we would want the information our hypothetical neighbor or Mr. Hyppönen would try to provide us with seems almost rhetorical. Twitter facilitates community discussion on important events. Whether or not we adhere to the advice offered should be up to individual user. By disallowing these updates, Twitter seemingly defeats itself, and its stated purpose. So much for “helping thy neighbor.”