Twitter Announces Micro-Censorship Policy

So much for the free-wheeling, libertarian reputation of Twitter. The company announced that it could start censoring certain content in certain countries, a sort of micro-censorship widget that would pop up in a grey box on the Twitter feed. “Tweet withheld,” it would read “This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Country.” Twitter explained the change in a blog post: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.” Within hours of the announcement, people had figured out ways to subvert Twitter’s blocking.