Twitter Inc. has played a central communications role in protests from Egypt to Wall Street, but the microblogging service became the target of an uprising this week after announcing a new way to censor individual tweets in specific countries. Officials of the San Francisco company stressed Friday that despite the move, Twitter remains committed to protecting free-speech rights and pledged that the "tweets must continue to flow."
But critics questioned whether Twitter had succumbed to pressure from governments or its new investor from Saudi Arabia, and some Twitter members called for a one-day boycott against the company.
"I love @twitter but will join the #TwitterBlackout," said one tweet. "Freedom is above everythin I wont tweet on Saturday."
"I feel betrayed by@Twitter! I thought they were different," read another tweet.
As with any Internet company that does business across international borders, Twitter faces the delicate act of balancing its need to expand with obeying local laws.
But Twitter has also positioned itself as a conduit for the free, unrestricted flow of information, much like a U.S. news media company, said attorney Craig Newman, a partner in the New York law firm Richards, Kibbe & Orbe.
Indeed, Twitter announced the change the day after the one-year anniversary of the start of the revolution that toppled the government of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. That and other Arab Spring uprisings, along with the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, gained widespread support with the help of messages spread through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
This week's change raised a number of potential, if still hypothetical, issues, said Newman, who is also chairman of Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication advisory board.
"What kind of impact is this going to have the next time there is a crisis in one of those countries and censorship laws require the tweets to be deleted?" he said. "This is going to restrict information coming out of that country at a time when it is most important."
Could it happen here?
And, he said, what if it happened in the United States?"What if on Sept. 11, the media wasn't permitted to report on what was going on inside of the country," he said. "Think of the panic and other implications of not having that information available."
Until Thursday, Twitter could only block individual tweets from view for all of its 100 million active users worldwide. The company has already done so for reasons such as curtailing spam, complying with U.S. copyright laws or for violations of its terms of service.
But in a company blog, Twitter said it is in countries "that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."
So the company announced it developed the technical ability to "reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world."
When Twitter does block a tweet, it would still be visible to members outside the affected country.
But those inside the country would see a message indicating the tweet or user name was withheld, although there also would be a link to find out more information at ChillingEffects.org, a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights organization, and Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.
The account holder also would have a chance to contest the blocked tweet, or delete the account.
Spokeswoman Jodi Olson said the change was "not at all about Twitter censoring tweets."
"It simply means that when we are required by law to remove content from the site, we can do it on a granular, per-country basis, rather than for the whole world," she said. "This will, and always has, only happen in reaction to valid legal process."
Investor not involved
She also said the change had nothing to do with any investor. Some Twitter members in the Middle East noted that the company last month received a $300 million investment from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.Twitter has run into government censorship problems before in China, which began blocking the service in 2009, shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests.
China also blocks access to Facebook, and battles over the country's restrictive censorship policies caused Google to pull out in 2010. And Google and Facebook have joined to fight a current lawsuit in India over content that government has deemed offensive.
Jillian York, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director for international freedom of expression, wrote in a personal blog that Twitter's action was "censorship. There's no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law."
In an interview, York said Twitter is still less restrictive than Facebook, which has caused controversies by unilaterally taking down photos of mothers breast-feeding their children or two men kissing.
"Their terms of service are much stricter than the First Amendment," York said.
York said she is confident that Twitter's current management will adhere to their principles of free speech and transparency.
"If they do make a mistake here, I will be one of the first people who will raise hell," she said.
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.
