Twitter restricted in some countries

 

Twitter announced that it would begin restricting tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.

Twitter wrote in a blog post, "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression".

It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said.

Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."

A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog. "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," the Twitter blog said.

Last year, Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray declared that the company was "from the free speech wing of the free speech party."

In the interest of transparency, Twitter said, it has built a mechanism to inform users in the event that a Tweet is being blocked.

Twitter's move comes at a time when internet companies such as Google and Facebook have wrestled with foreign governments over freedom of speech and privacy issues as they expand rapidly overseas.