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Changes: Twitters role as the modern bastion of free speech is now at risk as the fledgling firm moves forward with an aggressive expansion strategy
KOMPAS.com - It was credited with fanning the flames of unrest across the Arab world as citizens took to the streets in protest and decades-old regimes fell. It helped co-ordinate the Occupy movement that swept across the globe, and was blamed for playing a key part in last year's devastating riots in London.
But Twitter's role as the modern bastion of free speech is now at risk as the firm moves forward with an aggressive expansion strategy to grow from 100 million to 1 billion regular users. Today the firm revealed it planned to censor messages on a country-by-country basis. 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. So people outside the country will be able to view what is being tweeted. But, crucially, groups within the state will not be able to co-ordinate protests, as they did in the Arab Spring.
The plans have sparked fears Twitter will jump into bed with tyrannical governments to 'work with' on blocking 'offensive' messages in that country. And they are a radical change for Twitter who, only 12 months ago, underscored its commitment to freedom of speech in a blog post.
Under the headline The Tweets Must Flow, it said in January 2011 that, while it did not always agree with the things people choose to tweet, 'we must keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content'.
The move is critical, said the San Francisco company, to broadening its audience by expanding into other countries and to ultimately making more money.
But it has sparked outrage across the world, with Twitter users themselves taking to the site to vent their anger. Many have signed an open letter demanding its cancellation.
But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual tweets remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world. The blocking tool is designed to comply with local laws, such as bans on pro-Nazi content in Germany, it said.
Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed. Any user, it is believed, will be able to report an offensive message. This obviously includes governments and big businesses.
It is a similar tactic to what search engine Google has been doing for several 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.
The similarity to Google's policy is not 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 yesterday.
'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 is tweaking its approach now that its nearly six-year-old 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, most notably in the uprising that overthrew Egypt's government a year ago.
It is 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. Reaching the goal of one billion users will require expanding into more countries.
It 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.
If Twitter defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested. That is one reason Twitter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its service is currently blocked.
Google for several years agreed to censor its search results in China to gain better access to the country's vast population. But it stopped that practice two years after engaging in a high-profile showdown with Chain's government.
Google now routes its Chinese search results through Hong Kong, where the censorship rules are less restrictive. In a blog post yesterday Twitter said it had not yet used its ability to wipe out tweets in an individual country.
All the tweets it has previously censored were wiped out throughout the world. Most of those included links to child pornography.
