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'@girlgeeks' has been suspended from Twitter again (for no reason)

29 points by DaveSapien ↗ HN
Can we build up a bit of noise for twitter to reinstate her account? This has happened before, she gets targeted for her great work in trying to balance gender equality in tech. @girlgeeks, https://twitter.com/girlgeeks, EDIT: she's the woman behind this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Geeks_Scotland

25 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 58.5 ms ] thread
[dead] Kungpaoshizi
If you think women don't have an advantage in tech, you're wrong. How do I know? All the ceo's who are women, the fact 60% of IT jobs last year went to women, and my boss, who's female, says so.
eli
Could we get some context? Hard to get more information with the account disabled.
DaveSapien
jarofgreen comment has a great link. http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/comment/2011/who-owns-your-t...
DangerousPie
So her account was renamed because it violated some else's trademark. How does this equate to getting "targeted for her great work in trying to balance gender equality in tech"?
turingfan
It "violated" a trademark which was applied for long after the twitter account had been successful. If that suspension is ok anybody can get any (non trademarked) account name killed just by applying for a trademark.
DangerousPie
I can't find this information anywhere in the article, where are you getting this from?

And even if this were they case, the article also states "I am inclined to believe that this particular incident was not the result of malice, either on the side of the trademark owner or Twitter - it was simply an error of judgement, and those happen to the best of us."

So where are all of these accusations about people "targeting" her coming from?

infocollector
What is a good alternative to twitter? (Preferably open source and being used?)
imwhimsical
This is so tangential, that I'm going to "risk" getting a few down votes to just put it out there.
michaelmior
App.net[1] is probably the most popular alternative, although not open source. I believe StatusNet[2] is the most popular opensource alternative, although I don't know of any large networks based on it at the moment.

[1] https://join.app.net/ [2] http://status.net/

patrickaljord
These are not alternatives to twitter, anyone with basic comprehension of how to run a rails scaffold could build a twitter clone. A real alternative to twitter would be something with a similarly huge community to get your voice heard and followed. This leaves alternatives to facebook that now allows following or according to stats but still far behind facebook: google+.
michaelmior
I disagree that anyone could build a Twitter clone. (At least something that could possibly handle anything near the scale of Twitter.) Aside from that, App.net has a reasonably large community.
philh
Is that "for no reason that I'm aware of", or "for no reason that she's aware of"? (I'm pretty confident that there's a reason, even if it turns out not to be a good one.)

> This has happened before, she gets targeted for her great work in trying to balance gender equality in tech.

It sounds like you're implying a causal relationship between these two clauses, i.e. it has happened before because she gets targeted for her work. But the link posted in this thread suggests no such relationship.

DaveSapien
ok, ok. for no good reason then. These things happen because she gets targeted for her work. She's not a troll baiter at all, but still gets carry on like this from time to time.
philh
You haven't answered my questions.

> for no good reason then.

Are you not aware of a reason (but maybe she knows something you don't), or is she not aware of a reason, or are you aware of a reason and it's not a good one?

(I'm not asking because I expect there to be a good reason. But e.g. if twitter has told @girlgeeks what's going on, and you just aren't privy to those communications, then that's very different to the situation where twitter hasn't told @girlgeeks what's going on.)

> These things happen because she gets targeted for her work.

Cite? The information in this thread so far is that this has happened once before for unrelated reasons.

turingfan
The upsetting thing about this is that it makes twitter out to be anti-women. What other interpretation is there? That is, possibly somebody is unfairly targeting @girlgeeks and lying to twitter to get it suspended. But if so, twitter should be smarter than that.
marrs 

  What other interpretation is there?
That Twitter puts companies' rights ahead of individuals'.
[dead] nicop
Can't be doing with the whole 'women in tech' stuff. You are a PERSON, the rest of us still get fucked even without the vaginas.