Twitter To selectively remove Tweets In Some Countries

Jan 30, 2012, by admin

Twitter, according to its official explanation, promises to present up the “most recent information about what you find interesting.”

There’s now a stipulation to that, however: The social media service will present up the most recent information about what you find interesting — and what your government considers recognizeable.

Twitter proclaimed Thursday that the company now has the aptitude to selectively remove tweets on a country-by-country basis, permiting the popular microblogging site to obey with local governments’ request to remove or block certain content.

“Until now, the only method we could take account of those countries’ limits was to get rid of content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the aptitude to reactively keep back content from users in a exact country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” Twitter wrote in a blog post. “We have also built in a way to correspond clearly to users when content is withdrawn, and why.”

The company noted that it has not yet work outs  the option to keep back content from users in specific countries.

Once it does, it will attentive its users to selectively removed  tweets by replacing the text of the post with a grayed-out tweet that reads, “This Tweet from @username has been withdrawn in: Country. Learn more.” (See screenshot below.)

In its blog post proclaim the changes, Twitter hubbed on its new aptitude to take away some tweets. Yet a Twitter Help Center post increasing on this tool memoed that the site could also block admission to entire accounts. “[I]f you see a grayed-out user in your timeline […] or elsewhere on Twitter […] access to that particular account has been withdrawn in your country,” Twitter wrote. (See below.)

We’ve reached out to Twitter to explain whether the company previously had the aptitude to block entity accounts in specific countries.

Twitter sustained that “one of our core values as a company is to protect and esteem each user’s voice,” and the company noted that it has partnered with Chilling Effects, a non-profit centered on issues of free speech online, to create a site, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, where it will alert its community when tweets have been blocked.

The company also said it will “attempt to inform” users whose content countries have requested withdrawn.

Alternately, users could just bypass the limits on the whole: The Next Web has posted instructions for how to undermine the restriction.

Twitter users have been up in arms about the change, which many see as unsuited with Twitter’s professed commitment to openness and a policy that has the possible to undermine Twitter’s role in political movements, such as the pro-democracy protests that rocked Egypt last year.

“It’s an offend on a free society & could be a PR tragedy for Twitter after it’s [sic] much admired role in the #Arabspring,” tweeted @globalvybe.

Some users are efforting to arrange a “#TwitterBlackout” on January 28 and intend to boycott Twitter in objection of the changes.

Others, most notably the director of international freedom of appearance at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have come to Twitter’s resistance.

“Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law,” wrote the EFF’s Jillian York. “I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, symbolize a sea change in Twitter’s policies. Twitter has previously taken down content-for DMCA requests, at least-and will no doubt continue to face demands in the future. I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough state…and I’ll be the first to raise hell if they turn up.”