Birdbrained: Why Twitter will regret its misguided flirtation with censorship
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Outrage has predictably followed Twitter’s announcement yesterday that it has developed a system to block (or, as the company euphemistically puts it, “withhold”) specific tweets in specific countries if they violate local law, while keeping the content available for the rest of the world. The hashtag #TwitterBlackout is bursting with calls for a boycott of the microblogging service on Saturday, and headlines like “Twitter caves to global censorship” abound.
But the indignation may be overwrought. The Next Web’s Anna Heim points out that Twitter users who want to see a blocked tweet can simply change their country setting. In fact, Twitter’s decision to link to instructions on how to change that setting as part of its announcement has some speculating that the company is actually feigning respect for local laws while winking at its users.
“Chances are that Twitter perfectly knows about this workaround,” Heim writes. “Users won’t need to hide their IP address with a proxy: Twitter lets them change it manually, despite the potential loss in hyperlocal ad dollars for the platform.” Indeed, in an email exchange with Foreign Policy, Twitter spokeswoman Rachel Bremer emphasized user control. “Because geo-location by IP address is an imperfect science,” she explained, “we allow users to manually set their country.”
What’s more, Twitter has promised to disclose any information it withholds through a system that looks a lot like Google’s Transparency Report, which tracks requests by government agencies and courts around the world for Google to hand over user data or remove content from its services. Twitter pledges to alert users when their tweets or accounts have been removed, clearly mark withheld content, and post notices on the website Chilling Effects. The company will only remove content in reaction to “valid legal process — we don’t do anything proactively,” Bremer explained. She insisted that Twitter’s commitment to free speech, which “has been demonstrated in our actions since the company was founded,” is “not changing.”