Last week, Twitter announced changes to the way it handles content takedowns, and it was as if the internet had gone mad. Suddenly, netizens were calling for a Twitter boycott – to take place January 28 – and proclaiming the death of the platform… on Twitter, of course.While a Twitter boycott is unlikely to have any real effect – after all, Twitter is still working on a sustainable business model – and yelling about the death of Twitter on Twitter is just, well, humorous, users had a point: What the company had announced was that they’d built in the capability to censor content per country… in response to official requests, anyway, though you wouldn’t know that was the case from the hysterics.
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The truth is, Twitter has indeed instituted a method whereby they can – upon receipt of a “valid and applicable legal request” – take down tweets. The company also states that they will only respond “reactively”; in other words, to content that has already been posted. There is a safety feature built in: Users can change their location if they think the one Twitter has listed based on their IP address is wrong. ReadWriteWeb has suggested the feature might constitute an intentional workaround on Twitter’s part.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201213091936736195.html