End result of yesterday’s shenanigans: a bunch of theists stopped using Twitter because they were so butt-hurt that their own pithy statement re-tweet backfired. “No God” trended for seven hours, was removed from the list of Trending Topics once (briefly) during this time, and we know it was removed because it dropped from #1 to not-on-the-list.

After the full seven hours of trending, someone at Twitter decided to roll the “No God” trending topic with the “Know God” topic, which was trending much, MUCH lower (graphs rule!). This proves manual intervention on Twitter’s part, and I can only assume it was to appease those theists that proclaimed “ima delete mah page”. This censorship was probably in Twitter’s best interests, but certainly not in the best interests of free speech and I hope for a Streisand Effect style backlash. At one point, I tweeted myself, “Hey @twitter, you removing the still-trending “No God” is proof that theres no god, only people with root access.” and “I have an idea @twitter: if there really IS a god, let him/her remove the “No God” trending topic. (I’ll want logs though.)”

Way to kill a perfectly good footgun, Twitter. So not cool.

Julie at Attempts at Rational Behavior has the scoop.