Twitter decides to allow countries to censor its service

[KenW3]

The Associated Press is reporting that Twitter plans to allow countries to censor tweets that break local laws.

Twitter's new censorship plan rouses global furor

And so how [do] you respect all the laws or follow all the laws to the extent you think they should be followed while still allowing people to get the content elsewhere?

[JJMcClure]

Unbelievable, when did this kind of crap become acceptable or have we always been like this? I refer to the Twitter spokesman's quote below.

"This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability,"

Riiiiight.....

[benitez17]

Unbelievable, when did this kind of crap become acceptable or have we always been like this? I refer to the Twitter spokesman's quote below.

"This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability,"

Riiiiight.....

Businesses have always been required to follow the laws of the country they are doing business in. The Internet just makes it more difficult to enforce.

That said, the more repressive and restrictive countries are fighting a losing battle. They can't keep the lid on these sorts of things forever, as hard as they might try. People want to be able to communicate freely.

[Chabrenas]

I think they're playing a political game reasonably well. The reality is that a communication-suppressive regime cannot completely ban access to its citizens - it can only make it difficult. During WW II, spies and resistance groups used clandestine radios, then spread information by word of mouth. Even if a government manages a 100% effective firewall on the cabled Internet, what can it do about data from comms satellites? With a country that has huge sparsely-populated areas, are you telling me they can make it impossible to use a satellite link from anywhere?

Add to that the fact that there are already networks setting up in competition with the Internet, and I'd say that any censorious government's days of total information control will be short-lived.