Censor on Tweets: Necessary or Hindrance in Expression?

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After the announcement by Twitter in its blog last week, people who have the habit of tweeting anything they felt would require to make changes. Twitter has decided to censor tweets in some countries. It was not the situation from always. Before when it deleted a tweet, it would be unavailable throughout the world.

This is evident in the blog- “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. 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. We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.” Twitter voiced reasons in favor of censor policy and its characteristics. And, this too is evident in the above post.

This doesn’t mean that Twitter would be screening content, but it would make the objectionable tweet unavailable in certain countries. And, this step would be taken only after this one of the largest social networking website, receives legal and relevant request related to already published tweet.

A supporter of freedom of speech and director of reporters without border, Olivier Basille, asked Twitter to once again think on the decision’s proposition. “By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyber dissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization. Are you going to block tweets about the demands of Turkey’s Kurdish minority? Will Russian Internet users see their criticisms of the government censored?”

Indirectly responding to Olivier’s criticism Twitter told that it would censor tweet only if they got relevant request from “authorized entity”. It also conveyed that once the tweet is removed it would let the author know about it.

This censorship policy of Twitter is contentious and brings along with it number of candid detractors. Twitter’s policy of censorship is similar to what Google does- remove the content which violates the law and tells the users about its step that was taken after official request to do so.

There 100 million users on Twitter and the tweets amount to as huge as 250 million per day. And, with this statistics in view, Twitter believes that increased amount of transparency is will be the result of this censor policy. Whether this belief proves to be true and there is increase in freedom of expression or it is a hindrance, just wait and watch.

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