Twitter announces censorhip, causes controversy

The Twitterverse was in an uproar after Twitter announced on Jan. 26 it would begin censoring tweets in other countries if requested—a move certain critics are calling "social suicide."

"Is this social media suicide? I don't think so," said William Davie, Ph.D., UL Lafayette communication professor. "Did Google die when they agreed to censor themselves? No, they've made peace with the Chinese, and they've made peace in other countries, as a matter of fact.

"Social media suicide? No, what it is is the real world, which is if you're doing business in Kuala Lumpur, if you're doing business in Dubai, you're going to play by their rules and their rules are peculiar to their culture."

According the San Francisco-based site's blog, in order for Twitter to continue to prosper in other countries, there must be some censorship as it "enter(s) countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression."

"The technology is new, but the issue certainly isn't," said Robert Buckman, Ph.D., UL communication professor. "I have seen this over the years with Latin American dictatorships and even with democratically elected governments in Latin America and, more recently, in the Middle East. They believe they have an inherent right to control what their people read and think and believe."

The Twitter blog said Twitter will not be filtering tweets, but will be "reactive," or only censoring "when required to do so in response to what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request."

"These corporations, do I think they're going to fight harder for their freedoms abroad? No, of course not," said Davie. "The harsh, cruel reality is they will make financial decisions based on profit and loss, and they will not fight for the First Amendment abroad, unless they recognize it as a profitable fight. And right now, they don't."

The blog said Twitter's new censorship policy is a step up because instead of removing a tweet globally, it will only censor the tweet in a specific country, but said tweet will still be accessible to the rest of the world.

"We've been working to reduce the scope of withholding, while increasing transparency, for a while," Twitter said on its blog. "We have users all over the world and wanted to find a way to deal with requests in the least restrictive way."