CIOIN

After the worldwide protests against SOPA and PIPA, and the consequent Wikipedia blackout, Twitter, on Thursday, was supposed to follow their footsteps. But it introduced new censorship policies for its users. According to Rachel Bremer, European Communications Manager at Twitter, “The policy intends to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world.”

The move is a volte-face from Twitter’s position. Last year, the company posted a blog post titled ‘Tweets Must Flow” which indisputably supported the universal policy of freedom of speech and expression. 

This year, the company explained the censorship policy which scrutinizes all the 140 characters posted by users. The tweets maybe read in some countries, but not in others. 

“Our announcement is not at all about Twitter censoring tweets or any kind of policy or philosophical change in how we feel about the importance of free expression. It simply means that when we are required by law to remove content from the site, we can do it on a granular, per country basis, rather than for the whole world.” 

Twitter will allow users to manually set their country. It means if you set your country to India, then you may be barred from viewing controversial India-specific tweets. 

The censored content will be posted on the Chilling Effects website, said Bremer. In addition, users can track what kinds of content Twitter is being asked to censor or take down why the tweet was deleted. Chilling Effects is an Internet freedom advocacy website that has tied up with Twitter.  

Twitter’s new policy isn’t being received with open arms. “In the wake of political pressure from statutory authorities across the world, Twitter seems to be the first to bend among the other leading social media companies,” says Sasidharan, SEO Specialist and Social Media Analyst.

While several twitter users tweeted threatening to deactivate their accounts, social media analysts and agencies expressed their unhappiness. 

“Twitter’s announcement to block content that violates local laws has been met with tremendous discontent globally,” says Sidharth Rao, CEO, Webchutney. “The Internet has empowered people to voice opinions and express their point of view without fear of retribution and it's not that simple to withdraw some of that power, especially for an open platform like Twitter.” 

He added that this was not the first time a company has agreed to comply with government censorship laws on a country basis, in its attempt to expand its global reach. Google has compromised in the past and has had to develop a similar policy of pulling down content in various countries.

It’s a slippery slope, says Rao. “The lack of due diligence in defining what constitutes offensive/inflammatory content with poorly, loosely constructed web censorship laws makes the country vulnerable to restrictions--that many believe spiral into the state of censorship in China.” 

He also believes that by moving away from its core values of free expression, Twitter could affect its brand negatively. 

Sasidharan adds that Twitter’s new policy sets a bad precedent. He says that while the big boys--Google, Facebook and others--have been insisting that screening online content is practically impossible, but Twitter has just shown that it is. 

Twitter users across the world agree: Twitter censoring tweets is ridiculous. Most sensible people see offensive stuff and just ignore, says one user @MrNarci. That said, a Twitter blackout called by the Twitterati on the 28th and the 30th of January failed both times--all bark and no bite.

In the meanwhile, a state-run newspaper in China praised Twitter's new censorship policy. “It is impossible to have boundless freedom, even on the Internet and even in countries that make freedom their main selling point,” said the paper. Some believe that the new censorship policy is Twitter's attempt to break into the Chinese market. 

The question on everyone’s mind is: How far will the little birdie fly freely?

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