Twitter has released plans to allow country-specific censorship of its social media service, specifically “tweets” that may break local laws. The censorship won’t just take place by governments either, but also companies and individuals can apply for a post to be censored. Once a “tweet” is taken down it will be replaced by a censorship message and will either not be able to viewed in the country where it was posted, or in extreme cases, will have a worldwide ban.
Twitter's general counsel Alexander Macgilliviray believes that the new plans are good for freedom of speech. In a response to the backlash from “tweeters” concerned about the invasion of privacy, he said: “This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability. This launch is about us keeping content up whenever we can and to be extremely transparent with the world when we don’t. I would hope people realize our philosophy hasn’t changed.”
Some Twitter users totally disagree and are calling for a boycott of Twitter and demanding the company re-thinks the initiative. Many users are #outraged and some even planned a #TwitterBlackout day on Saturday 28th where they refused to “tweet.”
Freedom of speech,
with strings attached
Twitter believes the community is over-reacting and says that it will only remove posts in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity request.” Twitter’s own policy states that a censorsed post would be displayed as a gray box with the offending “tweet” now censored so everyone can still see who posted it.
Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that advocates freedom of the press and freedom of information, has sent a letter to Twitter’s chiefs demanding the cancelling of the policy.
The letter read, “By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization. Twitter’s position that freedom of expression is interpreted differently from country to country is unacceptable.”
If people aren't happy with the new plans, surely the most simple way of protesting is cancelling their accounts completely because it's extremely unlikely Twitter will backtrack on its policy. Haven't people got better things to do than "tweet" all day and stalk celebrities anyway?
Twitter is now home to over 300 million users worldwide, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.
