Last week, Twitter ignited a censorship debate in a big way, after the company announced a new policy that effectively allows it to block certain Tweets (and, more disturbingly, certain Twitter accounts) only in particular parts of the world. For example, a Tweet that runs afoul of local laws in Thailand would become inaccessible to users whose Internet addresses show they are located in Thailand – everyone else, however, would still be able to see the banned content.
The response to Twitter’s policy change was, at least initially, overwhelmingly negative. Thousands of users threatened to quit the service outright, including Chinese artists and activist Ai Weiwei, a man who knows full well the darkest side of authoritarian regimes. The message from users was clear: Twitter shouldn’t start censoring Tweets.
I grew up in a place called Qatar, a thumb-shaped stretch of desert jutting out the side of Saudi Arabia. Pound for pound, Qatar is probably the richest place on Earth. And like most of the Gulf Emirates and Kingdoms, it’s also one of the most information-sensitive. Within the bowels of government buildings, faceless bureaucrats wielded black permanent markers the way deranged woodsmen wield hatchets. By the time any form of media reached the general populace, any plunging neckline, ounce of cleavage, politically uncomfortable anecdote or religious icon had been replaced with a wall of black ink. Once, in a truly Herculean feat of moral gymnastics, a censor decided to wipe Piglet out of a Winnie the Pooh picture book.
None of this is all that unique to Qatar. Around the world, droves of adolescent boys in neo-Bowdlerian countries have all shared in the ritual act of holding a censored magazine page up to the lightbulb, trying to catch a glimpse of the legs on that blacked-out Gucci model.
But beyond the obvious act of censorship itself, the most offensive aspect of Qatar et al’s approach to the strangling of free information is the way the practice is presented to the public: as something necessary, even good, performed as a service to you by an authority that, most of all, simply cares about your well-being. For a while, the notice that popped up whenever an Internet user in Qatar tried to visit a prohibited Web site featured a gaggle of delightfully befuddled cartoon characters and the word “Oops” in a silly-looking font – as though government-mandated censorship was less an issue of human rights and more a cute joke, to be accompanied by a troupe of Keystone cops or a sound effect of a sad womp-womp trombone.
Getting back to Twitter, the thing is, the company already censors Tweets. In fact, short of refusing to block content entirely, Twitter’s new policy is one of the best-thought-out approaches to Web censorship. It’s clear, transparent and, ironically, will almost certainly shine a brighter light on the content it’s supposed to suppress.
Consider this: Late last year, a company called Web Sherriff contacted Twitter to demand a certain Tweet be deleted. Web Sherriff is an online gun-for-hire in the copyright infringement war – content producers pay the company to go after pirates. They send these demands to Twitter and other sites all the time.
The Tweet in question allegedly included a link to a site offering unauthorized downloads of a movie owned by one of Web Sherriff’s clients. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Web Sherriff demanded Twitter get rid of the Tweet, and Twitter complied. If you try to access the Tweet today, you get the default “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” message. There’s no other explanation of what happened on Twitter’s site.
For the full story, you have to go to another Web site called Chilling Effects, a joint project by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a number of American universities. Chilling Effects is a clearinghouse for takedown notices. As the EFF notes, very few of the major tech companies give much information about why they take certain pieces of content down. When a site is compelled to disappear information, there’s usually no hint it ever existed at all – the content simply falls into the memory hole.
