The balkanisation of Twitter?

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 January 2012 17:03

IT Policy - Regulation

You might have become used to the idea that what you see on Twitter is at least potentially the same as every other Twitter user following the same people and entering the same search terms. But that's about to change.

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The problem for businesses like Twitter is that - as other Internet giants have discovered - different countries have different laws. A well-known example is the way France and Germany take a strong line on pro-Nazi content.

Whatever you think about free speech, it's hard to argue that you should be able to use someone else's soapbox for prohibited speech if they're the one that is liable for prosecution.

So Twitter now has the ability to withhold a tweet from users in a specific country while keeping it available elsewhere. And providing your country permits access to chillingeffects.org, you'll be able to find out the nature of what was blocked by visiting chillingeffects.org/twitter.

Twitter also intends to let users know when their tweets have been blocked, and will mark blocked tweets and the reason for the block.

The change could mean that Twitter is allowed to operate (or to continue to operate) in countries that would otherwise have blocked it, but the company noted "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."