Following the mass social media ban on Donald Trump, ISP Your T1 WIFI — which services Northern Idaho and the Spokane, Washington area — has blocked their customers from accessing Facebook and Twitter.
According to an email to customers that was shared on Twitter, the company had received complaints from upwards of 2/3 of their customers, who were so incensed with the censorship decisions made by Facebook and Twitter that they decided to ask their ISP to prevent them from accessing those websites.
Our company does not believe a website or social networking site has the authority to censor what you see and post and hide information from you, stop you from seeing what your friends and family are posting. This is why with the amount of concerns, we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed from our network.
To repeat: the company claimed that customers asked them to block Internet traffic to Facebook and Twitter. Your T1 WIFI can reportedly allow access for individuals who request it, but they were so inundated with requests for someone else to prevent them from typing in a URL that it was simply easier to block everyone, then un-block the exceptions.
Further, the company reportedly claims that their service contract allows them to "block anything we want if we deem it to break any rules (sic) or illegal or harmful to our customers and more." Which is probably legally and technically true, but makes their response to the similar legally ad technically true move by Twitter and Facebook to be that much more bizarre.
Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the ISP's decision almost certainly violates Washington State's Net Neutrality laws.
Citing 'censorship' concerns, North Idaho internet provider blocks Facebook, Twitter [Sara Roth and Helen Smith / KREM2]
Image: Public Domain via PxHere
