Twitter CEO Says Blocking Policy Over-Distilled

[HardOCP News]

I like how Twitter is complaining about this issue being "over simplified." I'm not sure why they are trying to make this issue sound complicated, either you do business with countries that censor free-speech or you don't. Am i right?

Speaking at the All Things D conference on Monday, Costolo repeated the company's justification for the policy change it announced last week: By taking down tweets only in the country where Twitter believes they may have violated local laws, it is making sure the maximum 140-character-long messages are still available to the rest of the world.

 

[Beta-guy]

I personally hold to the view that the internet should be considered it's own country, to many times I hear crap like some guy sitting in his house is being extradited because he broke the law of some other country... internet should either be it's own country (our ISP bill is the taxes) or it's international waters.

at that point nations can choose to allow access to the internet or not, refuse the censored internet concept. The Internet allows for free thought, that simple concept is revolutionary in nations that suppress their people.

We see the internet for gaming, chatting, watching movies etc... but the internet at it's core is freedom. that's why SOPA pisses us off, that's why people got pissed off when they were talking about prioritizing internet traffic. That's why we got pissed off when ISP's were thinking about throttling bandwidth. on the internet we are all equals, and I have the freedom to say what I want, just as anyone else here does.

We should celebrate the internet and the freedoms it brings. The Internet isn't perfect but then again no place is perfect.

 

[Zero82z]

Am i right?

No.

Similar to the situation with Google censoring search results in China, pulling out of countries like that isn't going to make things better. As it stands, at least the people there have access to some of the content rather than none of it. The governments behind these censorship policies would like nothing more than for their people to not be exposed to any of these kinds of websites at all. The best thing that Twitter and similar sites can do is operate to the fullest extent that they can and hope that gradually, the policies in these places will change as time goes on.

 

[HardOCP News]

No.

Similar to the situation with Google censoring search results in China, pulling out of countries like that isn't going to make things better.

Fair enough. I am just of the belief that giving in to the demands of those countries is worse.

 

[Beta-guy]

No.

Similar to the situation with Google censoring search results in China, pulling out of countries like that isn't going to make things better. As it stands, at least the people there have access to some of the content rather than none of it. The governments behind these censorship policies would like nothing more than for their people to not be exposed to any of these kinds of websites at all. The best thing that Twitter and similar sites can do is operate to the fullest extent that they can and hope that gradually, the policies in these places will change as time goes on.

I understand your view and agree to an extent, but countries that would censor the internet also get an advantage from having access to it's resources, and all the while preventing their people from having the full benefit of the internet... I believe if the internet had a policy of 'all or nothing' nations that embrace the internet would grow, and profit, while the ones that choose the shun the internet would have a more difficult time moving forward. the message I would hope would come from a system like this is 'freedom brings growth'.

 

[evilsofa]

With this policy in place, would the Egyptian revolution have been the same?

 

[zg75]

But this approach is actually better in that Twitter gets a foot in the door and they only censor censored tweets for people inside of that country. Those of us in the free-ish world get to see the censored tweets. To me that sticks it to the censoring country pretty good.