Twitter Censorship Is Here

Twitter will now be serving up the latest breaking news and information about what you find interesting – as long as your government allows it.

The social networking giant has announced that it will begin censoring tweets in certain countries.

“Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” Twitter wrote in a blog post. “We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.”

The company added that it has not begun withholding content from users in specific countries, but will soon do so.

Twitter users are outraged at the news, and some are planning #TwitterBlackout on January 28 and intend to boycott the site in protest.

Not everyone agrees on the move, however, and the director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation has surprisingly come to Twitter’s defense.

“Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law,” wrote the EFF’s Jillian York. “I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, represent a sea change in Twitter’s policies. Twitter has previously taken down content-for DMCA requests, at least-and will no doubt continue to face requests in the future. I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough situation…and I’ll be the first to raise hell if they screw up.”

Let’s be realistic.  If it offends you, you can just work around the censorship.  You can read about how to do that here.

Here’s the full announcement from Twitter:

Tweets still must flow
Thursday, January 26, 2012

One year ago, we posted “The Tweets Must Flow,” in which we said,

“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page,http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

There’s more information in our Help pages, both on our Policy and about Your Account Settings.

One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The Tweets must continue to flow.

Related articles

• Twitter caves to global censorship, will block content on country-specific basis as required (boingboing.net)
• Twitter Faces Censorship Backlash (paidcontent.org)
• Twitter To Censor Tweets By Country (geeky-gadgets.com)