28 January 2012
There have been many articles about Twitter's new censorship policy, some of which naively argue that regional censorship is a good thing because the net amount of censorship would be reduced as compared to a global, all-or-nothing censorship. The reason why this simple logic is naive is that it doesn't take account of the threshold for censorship. Another concern is that all such policies inevitably lead to function creep, and, even in cases where there is an initial benefit, that is soon lost.
To help us monitor the success or failure of the new censorship scheme, it would therefore help us to have a little more cooperation from Twitter. What I propose is that Twitter create a new timeline of all censored material worldwide, with an additional field on each tweet containing a list of regions in which it is censored. Tweets that are censored in the region of viewing would appear on this timeline with the content removed but all other fields present; tweets censored only in other regions would appear in full. This would allow activists in the freer parts of the world to monitor and comment on the censorship process, and help hold governments and Twitter accountable for any human rights violations observed.
Refusal of Twitter to comply with this or an improved request is likely to result in great suspicion.
Twitter, please help us to trust you, as your social network has had an important role in activism around the world.