27 January 2012

Twitter hushing tweets country-by-country

Twitter tells the little blue bird to hush - but only in certain countries.

In a sharp policy turnaround, Twitter has announced that it will now exercise the ability to withhold tweets depending on the rules and laws of specific countries.

Previously, the social network had held firm to a stance of refusing to censor tweets that may contravene a country's laws. However, until recently, the only way in which Twitter could block a tweet was to delete it across the service globally.

In an official blog post yesterday, Twitter stated: "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."

Twitter has become a powerful tool, helping to spur social change across the world. It has been credited for bringing people together during the "Arab Spring" and helping to coordinate the worldwide Occupy movement - although the service has also been blamed for playing a key part in the London riots.

As such, Twitter has begun to receive considerable backlash as a result of its announcement, with critics fearing that tyrannical governments will try to use the new censorship capabilities as a way of cracking down on their citizens.

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