Twitter announced last Thursday that they are going to begin restricting Tweets in some countries. This comes as a huge surprise since Twitter has helped public upheavals against governments. This was more pronounced in the Middle East.
According to a blog post by the company, “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there.”
This decision by Twitter to censor content in their website comes as a surprise as the social networking site was very helpful in anti government protest in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries. As the revolutions spread throughout other countries, Twitter said in a blog post that they are not going to censor content and even said, “The Tweets Must Flow.”
The blog post said, “We do not remove Tweets on the basis of their content. Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users’ right to speak freely and preserve their ability to context having their private information revealed.”
