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@sweden Goes Batshit Blocks 14000

All purportedly in one week.

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DUCKBURG (Rixstep) — Sweden's official Twitter account went bananas last week, with the effects carrying over to this week. Protests began already a week ago, with the Swedish Institute coming out in defence, insisting the block list is 'genuine' and has been checked by 'experts'. But analysis of the block list shows that over 400 of those blocked have all told tweeted only once or not at all.

Last week's 'curator' of the government account was Vian Tahir, a relatively unknown 'activist' with ties to the Feminist Initiative party. Tahir's own website claims she is an 'expert' (in something or other) but offers no CV. A few sporadic clips can be found at YouTube with 100 or fewer views.

Admirable Activity

Tahir is supposedly to have blocked over fourteen thousand Twitter accounts in a single week (14421). Given a seven-day curatorship with the Twitter account, this averages out to over 2000 blocks per day. Given an ordinary eight-hour workday, this averages out to 250 new blocks per hour, or four per minute. Meaning Tahir blocked a new account every fifteen seconds.

All week long.

Jenny Ljung of the Swedish Institute came out in her defence once she was gone and the dust had settled, guaranteeing she'd seen the block list, all was in order, and that the list had been checked by further 'experts', at least according to Tahir.

But a closer look at the block list, which has since been leaked online, shows that 268 accounts blocked by Tahir have never tweeted - not once, not ever, not to anyone - and an additional 145 have tweeted a single time.

The list of blocked accounts includes several notable individuals from the Swedish parliament and several respected journalists. At least one of the victims is consulting the family lawyer later today.

Several Twitter users, discussing the situation together, noticed that they were being blocked by the government account, even past midnight, without interacting at all with the account. The suspicion is Tahir set up the account to automatically borrow from her own block list, and that she was closely monitoring online discussion of her. Tahir's own account has since gone 'private'.

This article will be updated continually.