Today is #WorldOceansDay, and we've been busy spreading awareness about this campaign & other ways to turn back the tide of pollution and litter. At the same time, we're also fighting what looks like a "Shadow Banning" block that appears to have been put on our main Twitter account (@CleanApp). In social media, "shadow banning" is the process of limiting the reach of a user's posts without the user's knowledge. We suspected something was up when the reach of our tweets was significantly lower than before, even though we were tweeting the same high-quality content and taking part in even more conversations. We confirmed that we were being shadow banned when we noticed CleanApp wasn't showing up in Twitter searches. #NotCool, Twitter! Perhaps Twitter doesn't want us to use its platform to raise awareness about a competitor. We don't know. What we do know is this: even though our petition is addressed to Google, we have made it very clear that everyone benefits from as many tech solutions to litter/trash/hazard reporting as possible, by as many tech teams as possible. As EVERY person who has signed this petition knows, there's plenty of litter and trash to go around. The "[trash/waste/litter] market," if you want to call it that, has plenty of room for plenty of players. The great irony of Twitter's apparent blockade of CleanApp tweets is that over the past year, we have made numerous arguments ON TWITTER for why Twitter may well turn out to be the ideal tech platform for global trash/hazard reporting. Today, while researching the resources Twitter makes available to nonprofits like ours, we came across a story that answers the skepticism some may have towards OUR petition: It turns out that Twitter does run CleanApp-type services in several pilot projects. In the town of Jun, Spain, Twitter was turned into a public utility, with citizens sending their civic complaints about trash, roads, and so on, through Twitter. On a slightly different plane, Twitter is also in a pilot project with Transport for London (the body that runs the London Tube, among other mass transit projects). In the description of that partnership, Twitter users could opt-in to get direct alerts about major route disruptions, bypassing the usual Twitter feeds. Everyone at Transport for London remembers the attacks of 7/7/2005 very well. So it's fair to assume that if Twitter is piloting ways of giving users info on route disruptions directly (again, bypassing the Twitter app!), it makes as much sense to allow certain data streams to go from users straight to Twitter/city/researcher databases. Bypassing Twitter and not clogging your social media feeds with photos of trash you're tired of seeing on your morning commute makes a LOT of sense from a user experience standpoint. It also makes a LOT of sense from a public safety standpoint. Here's a highlighted screenshot from Twitter's 2017 handbook for nonprofits (https://about.twitter.com/content/dam/about-twitter/values/twitter-for-good/NGO%20Handbook2017.pdf). As the logical evolution of CivicTech, all this makes a LOT of sense. What does NOT make ANY sense is why Twitter would curtail the efforts of a good faith, totally apolitical, environmentally-conscious nonprofit that is trying to raise awareness about: (1) much faster & much easier ways of cleaning our planet; (2) new revenue streams for BigTech firms, like Twitter itself; (3) need for harmonized industry-wide standards; and (4) the potential of entirely new markets & diversified economies emerging from this single modest petition. We'll keep working on getting Twitter to do right (we're not blocked, mind you, just getting "throttled" and unable to reach anywhere the types of numbers we were getting previously, notwithstanding the fact that we have far more followers and traction and momentum, etc.). We have a Facebook page, but with all the privacy concerns swirling around FB, it will be very disruptive to transition our efforts to FB. For our day-to-day purposes, Twitter is also where the entire tech community seems to congregate, so we don't want to transition away from a community we desperately need to educate and mobilize. So, this is where we need YOUR help. As we mentioned in previous updates, we're literally doing all we can, Tweeting as fast as we can to as many "litter pickers" and humble volunteers, and self-proclaimed "thought leaders" as we can. But if Twitter keeps treating us like a bot, our efforts are akin to screaming into the woods! Nobody can hear us. Everybody can hear YOU, however. Please lend your voice in support of being able to ride on a London bus and tell your "smartwatch" or "SmartHat" or "smart"-whatever, "Google, CleanApp this dirty sketchy bag, please." Together, we will make this happen. If your friends respond skeptically, feel free to remind them about 7/7/2005 and share this Twitter screenshot. Bottom line: BigTech is already moving in this direction. We're just accelerating them and emphasizing OUR needs/expectations/rights as citizens and co-equal contract parties. We're been so energized by our new supporters in the past few days. Let's cross that 200 supporter line, finally, what do you say? Thank you, @CleanApp