Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.
Twitter recently announced that it will be able to put a virtual fence around content and ideas that may be deemed unsuitable or offensive to users in a specific country.
Do platforms such as Twitter have a responsibility towards the nature of content? I don’t think so. I think most reasonable people would agree that this is a grand expectation. Moreover, not only are people and ideas self organizing, they are also self regulating.
Twitter is a driver of global conversation and by taking on the responsibility of moderating an overwhelming sea of international complexities, it is confusing it’s role as the messenger.
The sheer scale of this operation will be massive and it will be interesting to see how Twitter manages to walk the line globally.
Bottom line: Virtual fences hurt free speech and global conversation. Localized censorship will present itself as an ongoing headache to Twitter and is largely pointless in an increasingly open, free world.
#LetTheTweetsFlow
