Twitter's New Censorship Plan Rouses Global Furor

Twitter is experiencing the growing pains of any company that seeks wide global acceptance. Throughout 2011, the short-form blogging site was used by eager dissidents around the world to organize protests from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement. A new company policy, however, allows removal of “Tweets” for specific countries based on government criteria. Critics that once praised Twitter for its role in resistance movements against repressive regimes now blast the company, though other advocates for free speech, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, praise the firm for an open and transparent policy. “Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the website chillingeffects.org,” reports the Associated Press. The chillingeffects.org list will serve as a billboard for the world’s biggest censors and Twitter users prepare to face censorship with experiments like changing the country setting on their computers, tinkering with spellings and developing codes. – YaleGlobal