Twitter insisted its commitment to free speech remains firm, and sought to explain the nuances of its policy, while critics — in a barrage of tweets — proposed a Twitter boycott and demanded that the censorship initiative be scrapped. In China, where activists have embraced Twitter even though it's blocked inside the country, artist and activist Ai Weiwei tweeted in response to the news: "If Twitter censors, I'll stop tweeting."
One often-relayed tweet bore the headline of a Forbes magazine technology blog item: "Twitter Commits Social Suicide" San Francisco-based Twitter, founded in 2006, depicted the new system as a step forward.--Previously, when Twitter erased a tweet, it vanished throughout the world. Under the new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere. Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals. The critics are jumping to the wrong conclusions, said Alexander Macgilliviray, Twitter's general counsel.
Some defenders of Internet free expression came to Twitter's defense. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland credited Twitter with being upfront about the potential for censorship and said some other companies are not as forthright. Reporters Without Borders, which advocates globally for press freedom, sent a letter to Twitter's executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, urging that the censorship policy be ditched immediately. "Twitter's position that freedom of expression is interpreted differently from country to country is unacceptable." Twitter said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal.
"If it is applied, there will be a Twitter for democratic countries and a Twitter for the others." "Twitter will remove messages at the request of governments," she tweeted. Some Twitter users said this could be done by employing tips from Twitter's own help center to alter one's "Country" setting. Other Twitter users were skeptical that this would work. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to comment on Twitter's action and instead limited his comments to his own company. "In China, there are other issues that we call censorship. On one hand, he said, Twitter could put its employees in peril if it was deemed to be breaking local laws.
"Twitter could have taken a stand and refused to enter any countries with the most restrictive laws against free speech." Bloggers and activists from China, the Middle East and Latin America said Friday that they were concerned that new Twitter policies could allow governments to censor messages and stifle free expression. 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 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 various laws around the world. Twitter Inc. has played a central communications role in protests from Egypt to Wall Street, but the microblogging service became the target of an uprising this week after announcing a new way to censor individual tweets in specific countries. Officials of the San Francisco company stressed Friday that despite the move, Twitter remains committed to protecting free-speech rights and pledged that the "tweets must continue to flow."
But critics questioned whether Twitter had succumbed to pressure from governments or its new investor from Saudi Arabia, and some Twitter members called for a one-day boycott against the company. "I love @twitter but will join the #TwitterBlackout," said one tweet. "Freedom is above everythin I wont tweet on Saturday." "I feel betrayed by@Twitter! As with any Internet company that does business across international borders, Twitter faces the delicate act of balancing its need to expand with obeying local laws.--Until Thursday, Twitter could only block individual tweets from view for all of its 100 million active users worldwide.
When Twitter does block a tweet, it would still be visible to members outside the affected country.--Spokeswoman Jodi Olson said the change was "not at all about Twitter censoring tweets." Some Twitter members in the Middle East noted that the company last month received a $300 million investment from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Twitter has run into government censorship problems before in China, which began blocking the service in 2009, shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests. China also blocks access to Facebook, and battles over the country's restrictive censorship policies caused Google to pull out in 2010. Jillian York, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director for international freedom of expression, wrote in a personal blog that Twitter's action was "censorship. York said she is confident that Twitter's current management will adhere to their principles of free speech and transparency.
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