We have a conundrum on our hands. With the rise of social media, anyone with an Internet connection can spread their views all over the globe. Which poses a problem, for free-speech nations as well as suppressed-speech nations.
Today, Twitter announced that it will censor tweets if governments ask for it. It’s kind of a bandaid approach to a much bigger issue, which is that social media has opened up the whole world. Can we control it? Should we?
Twitter’s removal of tweets upon request by governments is targeted towards free-speech nations, not oppressive ones. It’s intended for nations like France and Germany, who are constantly working to suppress anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi sentiment.
Twitter doesn’t operate in suppressive nations because of the fundamental incompatibility inherent there. It just doesn’t work. By its very nature, Twitter requires freedom of speech.
“We hold freedom of expression in high esteem and work hard not to remove tweets,” Twitter spokeswoman Jodi Olson told CNN. “And just to be clear, this is not a change in philosophy, and there are still countries to which we will not go.”
According to the Vancouver Sun, Twitter can’t get into China, for example. China’s censorship starts with what’s referred to as the “Great Firewall of China.” Global Internet service enters through eight government-filtered gateways. Filters include long lists of websites and keywords that Chinese Internet users can’t access—they receive a “page cannot be found” error message.
That’s one way to do it. Another way is the Bavarian approach to Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s manifesto from 1923. Basically, the Bavarian state government, which owns the rights to the work until 2015, has blocked publication of the controversial work over the years. There’s actually no German law on the books blocking it, Bavaria has just refused to allow it.
Wednesday, a German court blocked publication of excerpts from Mein Kampf in a British academic work, according to CNN. It’s effectively only a three-year ban because the rights expire in 2015, but it’s a statement nonetheless. I mean, anyone can read Mein Kampf on the Internet (in most countries, of course).
But it’s not like censorship is new. Even free governments have influenced or controlled the media at various points in history, particularly during wartime.
A May 10, 1945, article in The Miami News ran a story about a wartime correspondent up in arms about censorship of his Reims surrender story, for example. Correspondent Edward Kennedy called it “purely political censorship,” saying that military security wasn’t an issue.
In 2011, we saw the power of social media in the Arab Spring. It became a primary weapon for revolution. It’s an issue that’s starting to come up more and more.
Every government asks Twitter or Facebook to censor something from time to time. Those companies actually keep records of the requests, which anyone can look up on the Internet (again, in most countries).
I guess the question is: Is it right to censor views, even if those views are abhorrent to most of us? I don’t know. But I think we’re just beginning to see this emerge as an issue, and it’ll grow in importance as social media continues its rise.
