Twitter accused of complying with censorship
From Chris LEFKOW (AFP) - 1 day ago
WASHINGTON - The microblogging site Twitter, whose role as free media was hailed during the Arab Spring, was accused on Friday of complying with censorship after announcing that it would be able to block messages in certain countries if the legislation local demanded it.
"This is very bad news," Egyptian pro-democracy activist Mahmoud Salem responded on Twitter.
"Reporters Without Borders is very worried about Twitter's decision to collaborate with the censors," reacted, also on the site, the association for the defense of press freedom.
"Does your new policy sound the death knell for any mention of the Arab revolutions and demonstrations in Manama on the Twitter service accessible in Bahrain?" Asked RSF director Olivier Basille in an open letter to the president and co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey.
"The Vietnamese using your social network in their country will they no longer be able to denounce the harmful consequences of the exploitation of bauxite mines on the environment? Are you going to block the messages related to the demands of the Kurdish minority in Turkey? Internet users Russians will see their criticisms of the power in place moderate? ", added Mr. Bazille.
"Was your decision motivated by the desire to enter the Chinese market at all costs?" He asked again.
Other Internet users have wondered if this announcement was linked to the $ 300 million investment by Saudi billionaire Al-Walid ben Talal announced in December, with Ryad exercising strict control over the internet.
In announcing this measure Thursday, Twitter explained that countries respecting freedom of expression "prohibit certain messages, such as France or Germany which prohibit pro-Nazi messages".
Now, Twitter said, some messages may be blocked in some countries but not others, while so far blocked messages have been blocked worldwide.
"We have not yet used this capability, but if we are asked to block a message in a specific country, we will try to contact the user, and we will clearly indicate when the message has been blocked," the site said, who undertook to report any deletion of message on the independent site ChillingEffects.org.
"Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft also carry out selective filtering in certain countries and Twitter is therefore only aligning itself in order to be able to establish itself in certain markets such as China", noted Olivier Ertscheid, internet specialist and master of conferences in Nantes.
For Danny Sullivan, editor of MarketingLand.com and SearchEngineLand.com, "there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to panic."
“Twitter is preparing for potential censorship demands, much like Google already does, by alerting its users when messages are withheld, and informing them of the reasons,” Sullivan argues.
Sullivan notes that Twitter has previously been forced to delete messages in response to copyright infringement charges.
“What's new is that eventually Twitter could have employees in other countries,” he said, “this makes it more vulnerable to legal action in those countries, so it needs to find a way to meet local requirements ".
"What if a country in revolution declares it illegal to 'tweet' about the protests?" asks Mr. Sullivan. "When that happens, Twitter says it's not being asked to block certain accounts or messages."
"In fact," he explains, "the authorities in the country in question are either ignoring Twitter, which is good for freedom of expression, or blocking it altogether, which is bad, but Twitter can't help it."
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