Twitter block Oz Greens talk

Trying to end a case of hashtag spam, Twitter instead briefly censored political discussion in Australia.

Political enthusiasts had started using the #Greens16 hashtag to discuss the Australian Greens in the context of Australia's 2016 election campaign.

The trouble started when some idiot in charge of herding porn-bots decided that Australian Greens supporters were the ideal target for NSFW links, and started hijacking the hashtag. Twitter's response started with blocking the hashtag for around 12 hours on Saturday.

The bots all linked to the domain “datingonlyforsex.tk”, which redirects to “localsex5.com”, registered to an apparently-Chinese company called Wuxi Yilian LLC in Xiamen.

Eventually, a human or an algorithm at Twitter spotted the mistake, blocked the bots, and unblocked the hashtag.

Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) provided Vulture South with a screenshot of the spam before it was taken down (along with the accounts generating it), but it falls under the heading "NSFW", as well as being singularly unimaginative. ®