Twitter Says they Plan to Censor Tweets Country-by-Country
ABC News
January 27, 2012
Twitter has announced a new plan that will allow it to censor users’ tweets on a country-by-country basis if governments object to them. It says the policy is an attempt to keep doing business in countries, such as China, that do not welcome all expression.
On the company’s blog Twitter said it will now withhold offending content within the specific country that censors the language, while leaving it unaltered for the rest of the world. It will also post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed.
“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,” the company said.
“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,” said the company. “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.”
Twitter and other Internet companies are trying to strike a difficult balance. The Internet is by nature global — and companies want to reach as many countries as they can — but they cannot go around local laws.
“Twitter has been very thoughtful in trying to operate in a way that allows them to operate despite these limits,” said Cynthia Wong, director of the Global Internet Freedom Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington. “At least they’re trying to limit the harm to free expression.”
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