Twitter changed the restrictions on some tweets in some countries yesterday. Before, the general policy was that a tweet would be removed on a global level by Twitter if a government requested that. Yesterday, however, the policy was adjusted.
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.
While this is – of course – running into criticism as it relates to free speech, many do think that Twitter chose the best option available to them.
Twitter would be banned outright in many countries if it did not agree to restrict Tweets, said Cynthia Wong of the Center for Technology & Democracy.
“The question is: What’s best for freedom of speech?” Wong said. “If Twitter was completely blocked from certain countries, is that really better? It looks like Twitter has done a good job in thinking through how to mitigate the human rights harm in complying with local law.”
Considering how big of a role Twitter has played in past civic uprisings globally, it seems obvious they’re still try to be a tool for the people and a voice to those silenced when they can. We’ll see how well it plays out when it’s first put to use.