Twitter’s controversial move towards enabling the censorsing of tweets has gained the backing of its first international government, after authorities in Thailand publicly endorsed the introduction.
ICT permanent secretary Jeerawan Boonperm told the Bangkok Post that the move was a ”welcome development”. The government, which last year contacted Facebook to request the removal of more than 10,000 pages that violated its lese majeste law, says it already has ”good cooperation” from Internet firms but it will contact Twitter to begin collaborating on the new feature.
Thailand’s lese majeste law prevents criticism of the country’s king and royal family and it was most famously behind the blockage of YouTube in 2006. Once the offending videos were made unavailable in Thailand, the Google-owned video sharing site was open once again in the country.
Brazil led the number of removal request in the search giant’s 2011 report, which revealed that Thai authorities made two successful request to move 225 videos from YouTube:
We received two requests from the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology in Thailand to remove 225 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the monarchy in violation of Thailand’s lèse-majesté law. We restricted Thai users from accessing 90% of the videos.
The positive comments from Thailand’s government towards Twitter’s new move are unsurprising, given its history of censoring the Internet for lese majeste content, and there was even a campaign that proposed to block Twitter, Facebook and other services in the country.
Late last year, Mallika Boonmetrakul, deputy spokeswoman of the opposition Democrat Party, tried to gather support for an all-out block on Western social media websites, claiming that the Chinese example was a good model to follow, as Southeast Asia politics blog New Mandala explains. Thankfully, the campaign fell flat but there are likely many royalists in Thailand who would support such a move.
As we noted last week, Twitter’s move is really about bringing increased transparency to its operations, rather than encouraging censorship. With all requests and taken down tweets clearly visible to users, the feature will reflect governments and their censorship policies rather than the US-based microblogging service.
For those in Thailand, or other countries where tweets may be censored, there are a number of workarounds to ensure tweets are left untouched.
Though there have been no reported arrests relating to Twitter in Thailand, a number of Thais have been jailed for posting messages on Facebook and the Internet. There were a number of high profile lese majeste cases last year, including a 61 year old man who got a 20 year prison sentence for sending SMS messages and a dual Thai-US citizen who received a two and a half year prison term for translating a banned book about the king into Thai.
Image credit: Flickr user laughingsqid
Well there's a surprise. Who's next, Iran, China and Syria?
What about Australia? They have been censoring this website, and the new film, since they began publishing cables showing how their government sold an innocent woman to slow death in prison, to hide its own corruption:http://www.expendable.tv
Censorship is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Twitter should be ashamed.
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Likehttp://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/08/twitter-braces-censorship-following-uk-riots/41127/
UK govt were desperate to get some control over twitter during the riots last year and twitter is completely blocked in China. So this is kind of old news. Also anyone expecting a private company like twitter to preserve any freedoms they may have is seriously deluded.
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LikeAndrew Spooner Hi Andrew. I'd counter that by saying that Twitter is moving to accommodate national laws, like any company must, however it has chosen to conduct things with the utmost transparency. Not only will it grey out tweets, rather than pull them completely like other service, it is publishing a list of all cease and desist requests that it receives.
No doubt, there will be censorship, which is never a good thing. But, you only have to look at India - where authorities are failing to get Google, Facebook and others to censor content that they deem 'unsuitable' - to see that it isn't simply a case that they will concede to the want and need of every government.
Then there are the obvious opt-outs that Twitter has left for it users. I think that its fair to say that, although no-one wants censorship, Twitter is dealing with it in a unique and potentially encouraging manner.
Of course, the proof is in the pudding and we'll need to wait and see how this all turns out when executed.
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LikeJon Russell
Not really sure what you're countering......
What I would add is that companies make choices about where and how they do business. Some, like the UK's highly successful Co-Operative bank, won't invest in arms' manufacturers etc. So, it isn't just a case of a company "accommodating national laws" because "they must" but what values drive that company in the first place. Of course, some companies chose to invest in Apartheid South Africa, some in Burma, some even in North Korea. This means, as you state, that those companies have to deal with "national laws" and accept the political situation in any country. Some companies take principled positions (often out of self-interest as the poor PR would damage them) and don't go near dictatorships or nations founded on racist policies. Twitter inc's values seem to be driven by traffic and not by principle. But, to be honest, I don't really care. The romanticisation of twitter is extraordinary and entirely misplaced. What we have seen with both Facebook and Twitter is the commercialisation and commodification of social interaction. That's not a value-judgement either. But in that context, where faceless corporations have such control over social interactions, censorship could be the least of our worries.
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