Twitter to
restrict user content in some countries
Twitter said it has built a
mechanism to inform users in the event that a tweet is being blocked.
SAN
FRANCISCO: Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting
tweets in specific countries, renewing questions about how the social media
platform will handle issues of free speech as it rapidly expands its global
user base.
Until
now, Twitter had to remove a tweet from its global network if it received a
takedown request from a government. But the company said in a blog post
published Thursday that it now has the ability to selectively block a tweet
from appearing to users in one country.
“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,” the
Twitter blog said.
Twitter
gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with, such as “pro-Nazi
content” in France and Germany, where it is banned.
It
said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able
to coexist with some countries. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we
will not be able to exist there,” it said.
“As
we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have
different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” Twitter wrote.
In
the interest of transparency, Twitter said, it has built a mechanism to inform
users in the event that a tweet is being blocked.
A
Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog.
Twitter’s
acknowledgement that it will censor content represents a significant departure
from its tone just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia,
Egypt and other Arab countries coordinated mass demonstrations on the social
network and, in the process, thrust Twitter’s disruptive potential into the
global spotlight.
As
the revolutions brewed last January, Twitter signaled that it would take a
hands-off approach to censoring content in a blog post entitled “The tweets
Must Flow.”
“We
do not remove tweets on the basis of their content,” the blog post read. “Our
position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our
users’ right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their
private information revealed.”
And
last year, Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray declared that the company
was “from the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
Still,
some open Internet advocates said it appeared Twitter did the best it could to
navigate the dueling responsibilities of complying with local law and upholding
free speech.
Twitter
would be banned outright in many countries if it did not agree to restrict
tweets, said Cynthia Wong of the Center for Technology & Democracy.
“The
question is: What’s best for freedom of speech?” Wong said. “If Twitter was
completely blocked from certain countries, is that really better? It looks like
Twitter has done a good job in thinking through how to mitigate the human
rights harm in complying with local law.”
Twitter’s
move highlighted the frequent tensions over freedom of speech and privacy
issues between foreign governments and Internet companies such as Google and
Facebook as they expand rapidly overseas.
In
2010 Google relocated its Web search engine to Hong Kong, following a very public
spat with the Chinese government over its refusal to bow to Beijing’s Web
censorship requirements and a hacking episode that Google said it had traced to
China.
