[liberationtech] Fwd: Twitter May Censor Tweets in Individual Countries

[Jillian C. York]

If you're a journalist, I'd think you could do better than CIA conspiracy
theories.

The mechanism is what's new: Rather than block content for their entire
userbase, Twitter can now block country by country.  What I mean to say is
that this is not a new policy: Twitter has already had the capability to
block content (again, for their entire userbase) if required to do so by
law.  They have, in fact, complied with over 4,000 DMCA requests, for
example.  The new mechanism, therefore, is meant to *minimize *the impact
of censorship.

This isn't different from what Google, Yahoo, and other companies do.

Of course, this is not to say that I'm a fan of this - it is still very
much censorship - but as Brian Conley mentioned, this has a lot more to do
with Twitter's forays into Europe than it does a desire to block at the
behest of authoritarian government, something that I suspect we won't be
seeing Twitter do (of course, as others have rightly pointed out, that
requires trusting Twitter, and all companies *can* go down the wrong path).

-Jillian (not Lillian. Seriously, can you read?)

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Mark Gould <mark.e.gould at gmail.com> wrote:

> (originally replied by mistake to sender, now to list, with addendum)
>
> Dear list members, and god, I mean Lillian,
>
> OK, facts then. How would the "mechanism" (which would be what) better
> enforce (whose) already existing policy? I'm asking for information and
> links, and if people want me to I'll go back through the list. I don't deal
> with innuendo, or rumors, and you don't know me. I'm a journalist, an
> editor, a writer who deals in the facts. So help, not insinuations, is what
> I'm asking for.
>
> Micah, thanks for the info on StatusNet... I am somewhat familiar with
> Identi.ca, but I completely take your point that at least for now, to get
> your message out it's hard to ignore Twitter. Craig, I'm still on the
> fence, and will read your complete post. What I admit I'm completely naive
> about and would like to be more informed goes somewhat to your point. If,
> let's say, Twitter did not censor content that would reach Iran or some
> other oppressive nation state, what is the world tribunal or tribunals that
> would hold Twitter accountable. Perhaps before saying more, I'll read your
> post, and research the legal aspects of this.
>
> Mark
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Jillian C. York <jilliancyork at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Dear god, not this again.
> >
> >
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-- 
*+1-857-891-4244 |** jilliancyork.com | @jilliancyork *

"We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the
seemingly impossible to become a reality" - *Vaclav Havel*