14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter's announcement that it was now able to censor tweets on a country by country basis raised a lot of eyebrows. Some people were even concerned that Twitter was turning to the dark side after standing up for its users a number of times.
But that wasn't true, quite the opposite. Twitter could be forced, by law, to take down certain tweets in certain countries.
Rather than block everyone from seeing them, Twitter has the ability to remove them from the eyes of users in a single country, leaving them available for everyone else.
The fact is, this is not a theoretical discussion, Twitter is already removing tweets based on legal requests. So far, few people were even aware of the fact, apart from Twitter, those requesting that the tweets be taken down and those posting the tweets.
But Twitter also decided to provide info on all censored tweets via chillingeffects.org, the same way Google does. When Twitter made the announcement, the new page which had been set up was not live yet.
It is now and it already makes for an interesting read. There are some 4,411 cease and desist orders in there, most if not all being DMCA takedown notices issued for links to movies, music and other pirated content.
It's quite interesting to see both what pirated content people are tweeting and what movie studios and recording labels are taking down. There was no way to now without the new page. Most of the notices, 4,410 of them are from 2011, suggesting that the database is not quite up to date.
Twitter has also made some clarifications on the way the process will work. It said that it will not filter tweets beforehand, it will only remove them if it receives a valid legal request.
"We believe the new, more granular approach to withheld content is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency, accountability— and for our users. Besides allowing us to keep Tweets available in more places, it also allows users to see whether we are living up to our freedom of expression ideal," Twitter explained.