What Are Your Thoughts on Twitter Censorship?

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With Twitter putting policies in place that allow it to expand into other countries but also comply with local laws that allow the censorship of tweets that governments flag as illegal Twitter has seen both attackers and defenders already over the past few days.

Twitter has legitimacy in wanting to expand and tap into a larger audience, with 100 million users, Twitter is about 1/9th the size of Facebook and only slightly bigger than Google+ and was around a lot longer than Google+.

Twitter also was the platform that most notably helped spawn revolutions in Egypt and protests in other countries.  The biggest fear is that now if people try to voice their opinions and calls for change, they will be blocked and shut down.

imageCensorship is not what most free countries tolerate or stand up for and the thought of Twitter potentially censoring tweets and removing them from countries where any outlet for free speech is a welcome and necessary option.

Twitter does however say it will investigate all “flagged” tweets and post any that were censored on another site mentioning what was censored and why.  They also state that they will allow the offending tweets to stay intact for other countries just not for the one where laws where violated.

We shall see how this shapes up and whether Twitter’s reputation will be damaged and possibly suffer a backlash with some people already declaring “No Twitter Days”.

How do you feel about the latest compromises Twitter is making in exchange for being more attractive as a social media network to more rigid countries?  Share your thoughts.

-Justin Germino

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Updated: January 29, 2012 — 6:29 pm