[tor-project] Messages for Twitter about Tor blocking?

[Griffin Boyce]

This may or may not be helpful, but all the way back in 2014, Isa worked on 
a fix for this while still at Twitter. We met up at HOPE and discussed 
concerns on both sides a bit, and talked about how to incorporate the exit 
lists into their firewall. This was the first time the problem was fixed.

The problem reappeared after a couple of months, so the fix was clearly not 
permanent. The second time I spoke with various people at Twitter and again 
there was discussion of how to keep the whitelist/greylist up-to-date, how 
to compliment twitter's existing report/behavior detection system, and how 
restricting access from Tor IPs disproportionately affects censored Twitter 
users (Turkey's block was still pretty fresh on people's minds).

All in all, there were three or so rounds of Twitter blocking discussion 
between me and various Twitter peeps. I'd say that the three problems that 
surfaced in these discussions were a) lack of "problem ownership" on either 
side, b) lack of awareness of the problem on Twitter's side (everyone 
always spoke as if the problem were new, that they'd never heard of it 
etc), c) Twitter repeatedly implementing fixes and then either not updating 
them or forgetting about them entirely. Automation is very straightforward, 
at least for importing the list of exits.

You're in a better position than really any other Tor-affiliated person, 
since you've been invited. So, I'm pretty optimistic about a long-term fix.

best,
Griffin


* caveat: Isa knew about the problem and already had a solid idea for a 
fix. Now she works for Tor :-) Coincidence!!!


-- Sent from my phone. How many NSA programs is that? "The E in email 
stands for Evidence." ~Willie Brown On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 5:58 PM, David 
Fifield < david at bamsoftware.com [david at bamsoftware.com] > wrote:
I was invited to go to Twitter and talk about Sheharbano's, Sadia's,
Mobin's, Srikanth's, Vern's, Steven's, Damon's, and my research about
web sites blocking Tor users:
https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2016/02/23/do-you-see-what-i-see/

I'm not a Twitter user, beyond sometimes reading the web interface, so I
haven't experienced blocking myself. But I've heard of Tor users being
blocked by Twitter. Is there anything you'd like me to say to or ask of
them? I know about the #dontblocktor hashtag (which is more often
directed at CloudFlare than Twitter); I know that Leif was off Twitter
for a while; I know about Marie's survey of users at
https://pad.systemli.org/p/twitterdontblocktor. Anything else?
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