Is Twitter’s move to censor posts locally the right one?
Written by on January 27th, 2012 in Latest News.
By Associated Press
Bloggers and activists from China, the Middle East and Latin America said Friday they were worried that new Twitter policies could allow governments to censor messages, stifling free expression.
Twitter’s new policy replaces an ancient one where tweets would be blocked worldwide. (iStock)Thursday’s announcement that Twitter had refined its technology to censor messages on a country-by-country basis raised fears that the company’s commitment to free speech may be weakening. Twitter is trying to broaden its audience and make more money by expanding around the globe.
“I’m worried it’s a slippery slope of censorship,” said social media commentator Jeff Jarvis, interviewed at a gathering of business and government leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
“I know why Twitter is doing this — they want to be able to enter more countries and deal with the local laws. But, as Google learned in China, when you become the agent of the censor, there are problems there,” he added.
Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, who tweets and blogs under the name “Sandmonkey,” questioned in a tweet whether Twitter “is selling us out.”
Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or tweets, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.
Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweet containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.
Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed. That’s similar to what Internet search leader Google Inc. has been doing for years when a law in a country where its service operates requires a search result to be removed.
Like Google, Twitter also plans to the share the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the chillingeffects.org website. Censoring a tweet would have the consequence of exposing the censorship to the world, something known online as the “Streisand effect.”
The similarity to Google’s policy isn’t coincidental. Twitter’s general counsel is Alexander Macgillivray, who helped Google draw up its censorship policies while he was working at that company.
“One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice,” Twitter wrote in a blog post. “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.”
Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, is tweaking its approach now that its nearly 6-year-ancient service has established itself as one of the world’s most powerful megaphones. Daisy chains of tweets already have played instrumental roles in political protests throughout the world, including the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria.
It’s a role that Twitter has embraced, but the company came up with the new filtering technology in recognition that it will likely be forced to censor more tweets as it pursues an ambitious agenda. Among other things, Twitter wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active users now to more than 1 billion.
Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to submit to laws that run counter to the free-expression protections guaranteed under the First Amendment in the U.S.
In China, where activists quickly caught on to Twitter despite it being blocked inside the country, artist and activist Ai Weiwei tweeted Friday: “If Twitter censors, I’ll stop tweeting.”
China’s Communist Party remains highly sensitive to any organized challenge to its rule and responded sharply to the Arab Spring, cracking down last year after calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China.
Nelson Bocaranda, a Venezuelan journalist, radio host and outspoken opponent of President Hugo Chavez, warned that Twitter’s choice could prompt a government crackdown on critics’ tweets ahead of the Oct. 7 presidential election.
“Twitter has become a weapon to preserve our embattled democracy,” said Bocaranda, who has more than 482,000 followers.
Twitter is “an vital tool” for Venezuelans to share information as local media resort to self-censorship as means of avoiding conflict with government officials, Bocaranda added.
Do you reckon Twitter’s go will bring about more censorship? Or do you reckon that Twitter’s open approach is an improvement? Let us know what you reckon.
Is Twitter’s go censor posts locally the right one?
(This survey is not scientific. Results are based on readers’ responses.)
