Is Twitter a tech company or a news service?

[Commentary] Twitter CEO Dick Costolo finds himself facing this question: Where do you draw the line?

Twitter was founded on the idea of democratizing information and has famously been used to organize protests against dictatorships and break news in real time.

But recently, Twitter was the main platform used by terrorist group ISIS to broadcast the gruesome beheading of journalist James Foley. And for Costolo, that was the line in the sand. He condemned the actions in a tweet and vowed to suspend any accounts spreading those images.

It's a departure for Twitter -- the company rarely comments on specific cases of accounts. But in an age where freedom of information is celebrated and social networks have exploded, there's a balancing act between disseminating information and an overarching respect for humanity.