Twitter has blocked the accounts that posted the sensitive information that caused Turkey to being its war on social media.
Twitter apparently was responding to a court order issued by Turkey’. According to their policy account, Twitter will not remove information simply because a government authority asked them to. Instead, they only remove content or accounts when given a valid legal process, like a court order.
Reminder: Our Country Withheld Content policy means we act after due process, e.g., a court order. Our policy is here https://t.co/9GiL75YfhY
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) April 19, 2014
They also stressed that they haven’t given and user information to the Turkish government, and won’t unless presented with a legitimate legal request. Presumably, that means the Turkish government still doesn’t know who posted the embarrassing information that led to the government crackdown. That hasn’t stopped the government from charging 29 Twitter users with crimes, however.
Twitter has not provided and will not provide user information to Turkish authorities without valid legal process.
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) April 19, 2014
While it is nice to hear that Twitter hasn’t sold out the user’s information just yet, the mere fact that they pulled the content brings into question its validity of it as a platform for political dissent. The Arab Spring was propelled by social media sites and Twitter in particular. Twitter, regardless of if it wanted to or not, became the social media site to organize protests under repressive regimes.
If they don’t work to curate that, they could soon find themselves usurped by someone who does.
We will have more from the Twitter, Turkey saga as time goes on.
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