January 31, 2012 | Online

Twitter getting into censorship game

Twitter announced last week that it is hoping to expand into new territories, like China and the Middle East. To make that happen, the company is promising to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, in compliance with each country's individual laws.

Explaining the new policy, Twitter's blog said: “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.

“We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.”

“We are very concerned about this new development," responded Dan Littauer, executive editor for Gay Middle East. "Twitter has an enormous impact in spreading news and media, especially regarding Human Rights, including LGBT rights across the world and in particular the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

"Twitter has been essential, for example, in helping the Arab Spring protests and also spread of information regarding LGBT issues in the Middle East and North Africa."

He explained that countries that do not tolerate homosexuality will be able to request all gay-related tweets be blocked.

"This is a very dangerous precedent,” added Littauer.

"While censoring tweets that break the law in individual countries is preferable to taking down the content altogether, we're going to be monitoring this very closely to ensure Twitter's commitment to free speech isn't watered down," promised Mike Harris, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship.

Of course, Twitter is not the only company to do this. Google, eBay and Facebook already have similar policies in place. And you thought the Internet was all about free expression?

Twitter faces user backlash over move to censor messages [The Independent]

New Twitter censorship function prompts concern in anti-gay states [PinkNews]