Twitter to choose 'edited' tweets by country

Twitter has pronounced that it now has the technology to discriminately jam tweets on a country by country basis.  

 

In its blog, Twitter said it could "immediately hold back content from users in a particular country". But it said the eliminated content would be accessible to the rest of the world. Earlier when Twitter removed a tweet, it would evaporate internationally.

The decision comes at a time when the firm is in the procedure of increasing its business internationally. In its blog post, Twitter described that its worldwide expansion meant inflowing countries "that have special ideas about the contours of freedom of expression", quoting France or Germany which prohibit pro-Nazi content as examples.

"Beginning today, we give ourselves the capability to reactively hold back content from users in a particular country - while keeping it accessible in the rest of the world," the firm said in a blog post titled Tweets Must Flow.

"We haven't until now utilize this talent, but if and when we are need to keep back a tweet in a specific country, we will try to let the user know, and we will straight forwardly  mark when the content has been withheld," it added.

A large numbers of Twitter users have showed disappointment over the move, with some indicating the harmful impact it would have on free speech, particularly outside the US.

Twitter, including other social networking sites like Facebook, has played a crucial - if undecided- role in sorting out everything from the Arab Spring to the London riots in 2011, according to the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Though, the micro-blogging service - which said it had in excess of 100 million operating users as of September 2011 - has also had to poise local laws with free speech in the process.

The blog statement agreed that Twitter would not be proficient to operate in all countries, saying: "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to survive there."

Twitter is opposed in China, where micro-blogging substitutes recognize as Weibo have rushed in recognition in the past year.