Twitter vs. Freedom of Content

"We do not remove Tweets on the basis of their content. Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed." So said Twitter last January as revolutions began in the Middle East and North Africa.


Yet now Twitter has announced that they will begin censoring tweets. "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. As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. We do not remove Tweets on the basis of their content. Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed." Clearly a totally different message.


Whilst Twitter did not go into full specifics, they used France and Germany as examples. In both of those countries pro nazi messages are illegal, so any tweets deemed to be such would not be visible there. Twitter did state that users who's tweets are blocked would be informed of such. Likely in a way similar to how they're told of being over the daily status update allowance or that their tweet is a duplicate.


And thanks to their being unspecific on what content won't be allowed, Twitter has now given itself carte blanche to hide or remove any and all tweets. So much for being the leader of free speech, or as Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray declared them to be "the free speech wing of the free speech party".