Thank you to the more than 7 million of you in the U.S. that took the time yesterday to petition Congress to stop #SOPA and #PIPA, two bills that would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on American businesses. Please keep +1ing, tweeting and sharing the petition with your friends.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: One subjective metric one can use to judge the success of yesterday’s internet-wide SOPA Blackouts is buzz. And using that unit of measure, it appears to have succeeded. On Wednesday, it was nearly impossible to escape SOPA discussion. Whether it was on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, the legislation dominated the national conversation. And it was incredibly difficult to go the entire day without stumbling on a site with some sort of SOPA / PIPA protest. Porn wasn’t even safe from SOPA protests.

An objective metric we can use to judge the impact of yesterday’s protests comes in the form of petition signatures. Of course, various petitions exist all across the web, hosted by various organizations. Signatures on those petitions already total hundreds of thousands. But the big figure comes from Google, who announced that 4.5 million people signed the online petition linked from their homepage on Wednesday.

As you probably saw, Google participated in the protests yesterday by placing a giant black censor bar over their logo on the homepage. Users who clicked on the logo (or the link below the search box) were taken to a landing page that said “End Piracy, Not Liberty.” Along with informational resources on the two bills, users could also sign a petition to tell Congress not to censor the web.

And apparently, a lot of people took the time to do that. Actually, 4.5 million signatures is an obscene figure to report from just one day.

It probably helped that Google emphasized sharing with the petition. Once you signed it, Google asked that you shared it via Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe I just have socially conscious friends, but I saw dozens of shares of the Google survey on all three channels yesterday.

Although Google has ended their “blackout” and the Google logo is visible once again, you can still sign the petition if you haven’t already done so.

We reported earlier this month on the new petition site started by the White House called “We The People.” It’s a service where users can submit petitions on pretty much any topic, and if it receives enough signatures, the White House will issue an official response.

Back then, we told you about a We The People petition called “Stop the E-PARASITE Act” that had garnered over 7,000 signatures. And as of right now, it has over 38,000 and is growing rapidly. The petition was submitted on October 31st.

Here’s what it argues, quite succinctly and effectively I might add:

This Bill would allow essentially allow A Great Firewall of America and would be a shameful desecration of free speech and any sort of reasonable copyright law. The new Law would allow copyright holders to force websites which have any copyrighted material to be blocked by ISP companies around the country, without requiring that the websites be given time to take the offending material down. It would also put pressure on ISP companies to monitor their users like never before, a gross invasion of privacy. This bill is a direct assault on a free internet and a shameful attempt by copyright lobbyists to destroy net neutrality. Essentially it’s a censorship law that would end the internet as we know it in America.

The creator of the petition is a redditor, and he took to the site to talk about his petition, where he says thanks for all the support.

The problem is that not everyone has faith that the We The People initiative is all that helpful. Internet users in the past have expressed frustration over some of the responses from the White House, especially concerning a particular petition on the legalization of marijuana.

For instance, here’s the top voted comment on the reddit post about the petition:

I read that if a petition gets enough signatures, the president will personally print it out and wipe his ass with it.

Another example of the lack of faith in this new petition system comes in the form of an actual petition on the site called “We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.” It’s gathered nearly 12,000 signatures already.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

Each petition currently has to reach the threshold of 25,000 signatures in a month, so it looks like the White House is going to have to give a response to the Stop SOPA petition. Let’s just hope it’s not that vapid, condescending, politically safe response that many have come to expect.

Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.

“This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” said Google product manager Evelyn Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” said Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

“We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she added. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

Since all of this was announced there has been a fair amount of backlash from the webmaster/SEO community. There’s a petition at KeywordTransparency.com (via Danny Sullivan) for Google not to take away referral data.

The about section attached to the petition says: “This petition has been created to show Google the level of dissatisfaction over their recent changes to keyword referral information, and will be presented to the search quality and analytics teams at Google. The argument that this has been done for privacy reasons sadly holds little weight, and the move essentially turns the clock back in terms of data transparency. The argument that this only affects <10% of users is also concerning as this is likely to increase over time, even up to a point where it affects the majority of users being referred from search."

It is certainly true that Google is doing a lot to get people signing up for Google accounts (obviously Google+).

The actual letter that you're signing when you sign the petition says:

Dear Google,

Yours,
[insert name here]

And look at the list. Matt Cutts is even on it multiple times (guessing not really Matt Cutts).

Do you agree with what this petition is saying? Let us know what you think in the comments.

These are some questions that went through my mind while browsing through all the tweets and various opinion pieces concerning a specific Twitter trending topic that appeared over the weekend. That trend became incredibly controversial almost immediately after it landed on the top trends list.

The hashtag #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend sparked a flurry of protest, many calling for @twitter to do something about the offensive trend. Most asked Twitter to remove it from the trends lists altogether.

Is there any content on Twitter or Facebook that you think deserves to be removed? Let us know in the comments.

The tweets containing the hashtag ranged from jokes like “…because she won’t make you a sandwich” and “because she killed your kid and got away with it” to rebukes such as “NEVER any reason” and “this is the most disgusting #TT I’ve ever seen.”

Of course, all of the people tweeting about the hashtag being horrible helped to keep it on the trending topic list, but anyways…

By Sunday night, the controversial hashtag was no longer on the list of trending topics either worldwide or for the United States. As of Monday morning, the hashtag wasn’t on the trending topic lists for any of the specific cities either. New tweets containing the hashtag were no longer coming in at a fast clip either – maybe a couple a minute at most.

Did Twitter remove the hashtag at the behest of the group of outraged users? Or did the topic just run its course and die out in popularity?

Here’s the graph of 24 hour activity surrounding the hashtag, provided by Trendistic. it seems to suggest that the chatter surrounding the hashtag died down pretty quickly.

But Monday afternoon, Twitter users who found the hashtag offensive continued to employ strategies to combat the trend. One way was through an online petition that counted retweets as signatures. Hosted on act.ly, here’s what the retweet looked like.

According to the site, it got somewhere around 2,500 retweets.

Some just asked @twitter directly to delete the trend from the list. Others attempted to counteract the trend by starting new hashtags like #violenceisnotfunny and #140reasonsdvisnotajoke.

But a sizable minority lamented people’s inability to take a joke.

Look people, “Reasons to beat your girlfriend” isn’t a clever hashtag. It didn’t produce very funny tweets. #DescribeYourPenisWithAMovieTitle – now there’s a winner. But #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend is far from the most offensive thing I’ve seen on Twitter.

Twitter is a wonderful resource for lightning-fast, real time communication. Its openness and free flow of information make it great. Does Twitter want to get into the usual business of censoring trending topics?

Reports of Twitter-trend censorship aren’t new. Back in 2010, people comlained that Twitter removed #WikiLeaks trends out of the topic list. Apparently, #WikiLeaks was still seeing a flood of tweets rolling it but some users noticed that it had mysteriously vanished from the list of trends. Twitter later denied that they had pulled the trend.

Other hashtags like #NoGod have also received attention after users claimed that Twitter had removed them from trends.

If you want to get technical about this, #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend doesn’t break any official Twitter regulations. On their about trending topics help page, Twitter lists the abuses that could result in punishment –

Nothing about offensive trends here. And on the official Twitter Rules page, the only content guideline that pertains is “You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.” The hashtag in question is definitely not a specific threat. The Twitter content rules say nothing about offensive trends.

So it could be a judgment call for Twitter. Should they intervene in a situation like this?

As long as Twitter exists, offensive trends will as well. Last month the controversy was #RapistSongs and now we have #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend. Next month there could be something even more offensive.

Things like rape and domestic violence are terrible whenever they happen to whomever they happen to – but a joke is a joke. Twitter can’t make a habit of removing trending topics just because they ruffle some feathers. If that’s what people are talking about the most, then it should show up on the list. Offensive speech is protected speech when it comes to the law, and Twitter should follow that recommendation. Can you imagine the backlash if Twitter began to censor topics regularly?

What about Facebook? They don’t have a “trending topics” list but that hasn’t stopped them from inviting controversy over offensive content.

Just last week the debate emerged surrounding Holocaust denier groups on the on the social network. Should Facebook remove those groups? Should all speech be free, even that kind that is absolutely despicable to most of us?

Another huge controversy hit Facebook when Jewish activists demanded that they take down a page entitled “Third Palestinian Intifada.” That page called for a specific date to begin an uprising against Israel. Comments and videos also called for the killing of Jews. Facebook eventually pulled the page, but was later sued for not taking it down fast enough.

Here, the lines become even blurrier. Is free speech still free speech when it advocates actual, specific violence? The law would say no. A person can’t advocate that harm be done to another, specific person. To what extent should social networks police this type of content?

And what about when the offensive content isn’t simply words anymore, but videos? YouTube has a policy against aggressively shocking content, but that policy was tested when they pulled an animal cruelty video uploaded by the activist group Mercy For Animals.

The video, which shows the horrible treatment of cows at a slaughterhouse, was later reinstated by YouTube after people protested the removal. This begs the question: What do social networks do about offensive content when it is also informative or documentary in nature?

The two issues when it comes to social media and censorship are whether offensive content is protected free speech and even if it is, should social networks model their policies on our constitutional definition of free speech?

Even if a horrible Twitter trend or a unsettling Facebook page counts as free speech, does the social network have the obligation to let it stand? Or should they make the decision to remove it based on enough public outcry?

I think the removal of controversial content by social media sites starts us down a slippery slope. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

The petition comes from Daniel Bowman Simon and Casey Gustowarow who ride around the country in a double-decker bus made out of two school buses that have been fused together. On top of the bus is a garden.

One of their stops was a visit to Google. "Their visit to Google was one stop in their cross-country drive in the bus," says Marketing Manager Andrew Chang on the Google Docs Blog.  "At Google, they had lunch with employees, including a Google chef. Daniel and Casey recently arrived in Washington, D.C., just in time for election day."

Of course the two carry around a paper version of the petition, but they offer their online version through Google Docs, and Google apparently found this interesting enough talk about it themselves. That’s why if you use Google Docs in an interesting way like this, you maybe able to generate some increased exposure by letting them know about it (you may do so in the comments on the blog post).