Twitter Blocked in Egypt As Protests Turn Violent [Updated]

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"We're not the experts on how Twitter is being used in highly developing situations 1000s of miles from our comfortable HQ in SF," the company tweeted. "The experts are those using Twitter on the ground and those coordinating with them around the world."

So far about 10 of those people have submitted reports of Twitter being down to HerdictWeb. Mark Belinsky, the co-director of the nonprofit Digital Democracy, told CNET that it's still hard to tell whether the site's inaccessibility is due to an overload of traffic or government action.

As anti-government protesters and police clash in Cairo today, reports indicate that the Egyptian government is making an effort to censor Twitter and other websites.

As with the protests in Tunisia throughout the last month (which at least partially inspired the Egyptian uprising), the protest in Cairo was organized using Facebook. The Christian Science Monitor reports that more than 90,000 people signed up on a Facebook Page for the protests in the past week, though the turnout appears to be much smaller than that.

Another similarity between the Egyptian protests and the Tunisia uprising: People on the ground have been using Twitter to post photos, video feeds and other information about the protests using hashtags like #Jan25, #EgyRevolt and #Egypt.

But now some reports indicate that Twitter as well as some websites reporting live on the demonstrations have been blocked in Egypt. Vodafone Egypt also confirms that Twitter is down in this tweet.

We have reached out to Twitter for confirmation and will be updating this article as we hear more.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto,