WASHINGTON - In a move that has caused dismay among its users, popular social network Twitter said it can selectively censor messages on a country-by-country basis.
In a blog post titled 'Tweets Must Flow', the San Fransico-based micro-blogging company said: "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 explained that its international growth meant entering countries "that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression", citing France or Germany which ban pro-Nazi content as examples.
But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Earlier, when Twitter deleted a tweet it would disappear worldwide.
The move comes at a time when the company is in the process of expanding its global business.
"We haven't yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld," it added.
Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook use similar systems to control the content shown in respective countries.
In China, Google indicates when a search result has been censored. Now, blocked tweets will say: "This tweet from [username] is withheld." The blocking can work at the individual tweet or account level.
Twitter, along with other social networking sites like Facebook, has played a major role in the Arab Spring uprising.
The micro-blogging service, which has more than 100 million active users, is blocked in China, where alternatives known as Weibo are popular.
The blog statement acknowledged that Twitter would not be able to operate in all countries, saying: "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there."
Terence Eden, a London-based mobile developer, complained on Twitter: "I don't want to develop on an API which contains a 'withheld_in_countries' field. What's next, a 'for_your_own_good' field?" He added: "I helped develop a Twitter client that Chinese pro-democracy activists used. Guess that's dead now. Thanks, Twitter," The Guardian reported.
Eden described the move as censorship and said Twitter would be able to identify which country a user is in by the internet address. "You can spot the censorship, but it's hard to route around it," he said.
