An Internet service provider in Northern Idaho is blocking access to Facebook and Twitter on request in response to censorship allegations after President Donald Trump’s accounts on both platforms were suspended.
Twitter suspended Trump’s account on Friday, a day after indefinite suspensions of Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were announced in the name of promoting a peaceful transition to President-elect Joe Biden.
YourT1Wifi circulated an email to customers on Sunday afternoon about calls from users to block the sites. In response, representatives said YourT1Wifi will be in effect on Facebook, Twitter “and any other website that may also censor”, according to the email. Customers can be added to a no-block list upon request.
While YourT1Wifi’s email says the decision is not biased – ‘just a moral foundation of fair and decent communication’ – client Krista Yep said she believes the move shows support for the riots in the Washington Capitol , DC last week. A Twitter post that has meanwhile gone viral.
“I was shocked,” she said in an interview, “but it was just clear, OK, fantastic: my ISP supports the uprising.”
When Yep notified the company of her desire to cancel the service, Bret Fink, owner of YourT1Wifi, said in a response that there was no customer-wide block.
He said YourT1Wifi will block the sites on request. More than two-thirds of the company’s customers requested firewalls, he wrote.
In his email to Yep, Fink said he “probably could have articulated a better way because some people get confused and think everyone is being blocked.” They repeated the option in an email per customer shared Monday morning.
‘As many (customers) have said,’ reads the email, ‘they do not want their children or their family to link to these sites, and do not have the knowledge to prevent them from appearing, so ask to do it for them. ”
Founded in 1996, YourT1Wifi extends to parts of the Idaho handle and the Spokane area, according to the company’s website.
Fink did not immediately return a request for comment.
Yep – which is still planning to cancel its services – said it believes YourT1Wifi is ’emphasizing’ customers with the way the company offers its offering.
“They probably thought they were taking a stand for their ideals, which is probably in line with Trump’s ideals with the uprising and ‘censorship,'” she said.
Jim Alves-Foss, a professor of computer science at the University of Idaho, said providers are known to block websites on request as a customer service.
“I know that some (internet service providers) offer ‘family-friendly’ services where they block certain websites,” said Alves-Foss. ‘It’s more work for an (internet service provider) to block individual lists of sites that need to be managed. They need to have that infrastructure in place. ”
In general, service providers regularly censor and block certain websites, such as cyber-threatening websites, Alves-Foss said. With the repeal of the net neutrality rules in June 2018, the Federal Communications Commission could allow providers to block websites as long as it is transparent with their disclosure, he said.
However, the move could be in violation of Washington’s net neutrality law. The law prohibits providers from “blocking legal content, applications, services or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.” Idaho does not have a net neutrality law.
A spokesman for the Washington government office, Jay Inslee, said the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division was aware of the situation.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office said Attorney General Bob Ferguson “takes the application of Washington’s net neutrality legislation very seriously.”