When protests broke out in Egypt earlier this week, microblogging service Twitter was the first thing to go. The country quickly blocked the service to avoid seeing repeats from other Web 2.0-centric revolutions, such as the recent upheaval in Tunisia or 2009’s protests in Iran.
Today, Twitter has come forward and with a pledge to “keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.”
In the company’s blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes that Twitter’s goal relies on the freedom of expression:
Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential. Some Tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don’t always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.
According to Stone, not only is it beyond Twitter’s technical abilities to review all 100+ million tweets it sees every day, but it comes down to an ethical believe in the freedom of speech. Twitter does, however, remove “illegal Tweets and spam”, which include impersonation, threats, copyright and trademark infringement and more.
Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users’ right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed. While we may need to release information as required by law, we try to notify Twitter users before handing over their information whenever we can so they have a fair chance to fight the request if they so choose.
When a tweet is to be removed for copyright, writes Stone, “We submit all copyright removal notices to @chillingeffects and they are now Tweeting them from @ChillFirehose.”
Indeed, when the U.S. government approached the company last month with a subpoena regarding information on a number of people connected with whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, it did something many commended it for – it “successfully challenged the gag order in court, and then told the targets their data was being requested, giving them time to try and quash the order themselves,” according to Wired.
At the end of his post on free speech and Twitter, Stone encourages readers to follow along in the discussion by following a Twitter-curated list on the topic, “or better yet, come work with us.”
