HACK THE PLANET!

Information == Freedom

nicknameless:

I feel like our web companies are starting to run scared from the governments in this world of ours. Just last year, Twitter was proud that it didn’t censor, and help make protest happen, and free people from oppressors. Do you think that’s going to happen again if they start censoring tweets for certain countries? 

If the governments can control the information the people are receiving, the government can control the people.

Information == Freedom

Twitter Censorship Policy of the Day: Twitter has announced a new policy that will let it block tweets from being viewed by users in specific countries, while leaving them available to the rest of the world.

Blocked tweets (and the reasons they were blocked) will be listed at a new site created in partnership with Internet law watchdog group Chilling Effects.

Twitter is framing this as a positive development that will help it respect the laws of various countries — blocking pro-Nazi tweets in Germany and France, for example — but some are viewing it as censorship.

BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin said the new policy is “a huge setback and disappointment,” especially in light of Twitter’s role as an uncensored means of communication for protests like the one that took place in Tahrir Square, Egypt a year ago.

At the time, Twitter wrote, “The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. This is both a practical and ethical belief. … Almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right.”

[theatlantic / boingboing]