In lieu of Freaky Friday (and there's a LOT of freaky news out there) I decided to let you in on a story I just read. It says "Twitter announces micro-censorship policy." The company announced yesterday that it could start censoring certain content in certain countries, a sort of micro-censorship widget that would pop up in a grey box on the Twitter feed. It would read, "Tweet withheld" and "This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Country."
In principle, that could apply to a message promoting Nazi ideology in Germany, a critical remark about the monarchy in Thailand, or perhaps even lines from "The Satanic Verses" in India, where the book remains banned.
Until now, the company explained, if a tweet had to be removed, it would vanish from Twitter pages worldwide. The company did not have the ability to selectively remove it country by country. They declined to say how many posts it had removed in the past because it was asked by a government authority. Twitter said it withheld content only in response to requests from United States Law Enforcement officials.
Many think the reason Twitter has decided to start censorship is their desire to go into China, where neither Twitter nor Facebook operates. China has a popular Twitter-like platform called Sina Weibo. The Twitter blog post said yesterday, "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression."
The change could have wide implications, since the majority of Twitter users are outside of the United States.
Sigh...
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