A year ago, Twitter was being heralded as a game-changing, freedom-promoting platform capable of organizing a noble revolution across the Arab world. Now, the expanding company seems to be having second thoughts about just how committed it is to unfettered, unconditional free speech. In a blog post Thursday, Twitter announced that it would start abiding by individual countries' censorship rules by selectively blocking controversial tweets from appearing to local users. For instance, in France and Germany, pro-Nazi content is illegal; pro-Nazi tweets there will now be banned. (Twitter users in unaffected countries will still be able to see the blocked tweets.) This is a marked shift for the company, which had previously said, "Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely." Is this change justified?
This is an unfortunate move: The new policy seems counterintuitive, says Alex Moore at Death and Taxes. How relevant would a tweet by someone organizing protests in Egypt be to users in other countries? Censoring locally "kills the platform's most immediate threat to oppressive governments," taking away the proven power of the medium "in countries that need [it] the most."
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