Twitter to Censor Tweets Country-by-Country

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.”

A censored post, the company said, would be labeled “Tweet withheld. This Tweet from
@Username has been withheld in: Country.” There would be a link to an
explanation of the policy.

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.”

Having grown to 100 million users in six years, Twitter has been used
as a tool for social uprisings around the world in the past year, from
the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Arab Spring protests across the
Middle East.

“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that
have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” said
Twitter’s blog post.

Twitter’s new policy was met with objections via — what else? — Twitter posts. A group called demand progress posted a petition to the company: “We need you to keep fighting for and
enabling freedom of expression — not rationalize away totalitarianism
as a legitimate ‘different idea.’”

But the First Amendment in the U.S. is not widely matched around the
world. Twitter pointed out that France and Germany ban pro-Nazi comments
as hate speech. And its new censorship policy could also apply to South
Korea’s 2010 ban on North Korea’s Twitter account. South Korea’s
Communications Standards Commission said it contained “illegal
information.”

Twitter is currently blocked in China, where in 2010 Google had a
highly publicized face-off with the country’s government. Google finally
stopped censoring online searches in China and directed users to its
servers in Hong Kong, where the rules are looser.

“It’s understandable that users will be upset” with Twitter’s new
policy, said Wong, “but there’s only so much a company can do to push
back against governments.”
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Why is the government trying to manipulate EVERYTHING they can?

#1Fan wrote:Why is the government trying to manipulate EVERYTHING they can?

To get us used to them having total control. Little by little it adds up to some NWO shit.