(2012-01-26) Twitter Country Level Censorship

Twitter will start supporting country-level Censorship. 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. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content. Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. 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.

Xeni Jardin notes that Jillian York of the EFF isn't too unhappy about this: "this isn't different from how Twitter's already been handling court-ordered requests, except that it won't affect users outside of a given country".

Apparently all these get logged on the ChillingEffects site.

I believe this is the list of all "International" takedowns across recipients (Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, etc.).

(Btw, how amusing that lawyers issue DMCA takedowns to Wikipedia instead of some admin just removing the material... Actually, I think the process might be automated...)

So far, non-IP orders seem quite rare. Is this really the full extent? There's some talk about filtering pro-Nazi content because of German laws, but it doesn't seem visible on the ChillingEffects site. Is the filtering not happening yet, or not getting logged because it's an automated filter instead of specific court orders, or what?

Fred Wilson thinks it's a good thing (as an aside about Tech Meme). I Commented to see if any of his tribe knows more...

Dave Winer has some useful notes.

Will this (plus SOPA) help push fresh Open Twitter/Universal Outbox discussion?

Jan31 update: All this distracts us, however, from a simple fact: Twitter currently performs no political censorship at all and has never once removed a tweet at the request of a foreign government. The false choice between degrees of political censorship belies Twitter's third option, of continuing its censorship-free tradition instead of playing with political fire abroad... Together, these well-muddied waters led many reporters to rephrase Twitter's claim into an explicit reduction of censorship, rather than its inauguration... English courts are in the habit of issuing "superinjunctions" to ban censored media from even disclosing the fact that they've been censored—given its pledge to publish, Twitter may have to choose between its commitment to transparency and avoiding contempt of court.

May'2014: It seems to be getting more popular, according to the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, which tracks such things: tweets and/or users are now being blocked in Pakistan as well as Turkey, and a pro-Ukrainian account is apparently unavailable to users who try to view it from inside Russia, at the request of the government. See EFF position.