Trouble in the Twitter-verse

(Photo courtesy of metamodernism.com)

Very disappointed to read yesterday that social media giant Twitter is willing to throw its whole reputation as an agent for change (and, in the case of the Arab Spring, revolution) away to please authoritarian bureaucrats abroad, by taking down users' tweets if that user's government doesn't like them. Somini Sengupta from the New York Times explains:

Twitter explained the change in a blog post on Thursday: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.” 

In principle, that could apply to a message promoting Nazi ideology in Germany, a critical remark about the monarchy in Thailand, or perhaps even lines from “The Satanic Verses” in India, where the 1988 book remains banned.

The announcement has already provoked protest from Twitter's millions of users worldwide, including Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who posted "If Twitter starts censoring, I'll stop tweeting." Between this and the recently defeated (thank God) SOPA Bill, it's quite alarming to see that the idea of censoring the internet seems to be "trending" among corporate elites and their government lapdogs in this country and beyond.