On September 25, San Francisco based Twitter was sent a letter from the Hanover Police, Germany. It says that, “the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Lower-Saxony in Germany has banned the organization ‘Better Hanover’. It is disbanded, its assets are seized and all its accounts in social networks have to be closed immediately.” (Google translation) The letter added, “I ask you to close this account immediately and not to open any accounts substitute for the organization 'Better Hanover’.”
Yesterday, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Macgillivray tweeted, “We announced the ability to withhold content back in Jan. We're using it now for the first time re: a group deemed illegal in Germany.” Note that the term is ‘withhold content’, not ‘censor’. It is Twitter’s response to a difficult situation. Twitter is a US-based company where freedom of speech is protected by the constitution; but it operates in many different jurisdictions with many different laws. According to Reuters, Twitter currently has one of the most lax terms-of-service restricting speech, reflecting the company's long-stated position that it would rather err on the side of free speech.” Nevertheless it feels it must respect the laws of the countries in which its users reside.
The result, announced at the beginning of this year, is the ability to filter geographically specific accounts.
“Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” added Macgillivray. It is this ability that has now been used for the first time in response to the Hanover Police request. It would appear that the account has not been cancelled, but is simply not available in Germany. At the time of writing this, “besseres-hannover @hannoverticker” is still available from the UK. The last entry was from 21 hours ago, and claims, “Look at this regime: They gossip viciously about china and russia but noone about them! freedom for #germany”
Twitter’s policy is not without its critics. Typical sentiments were voiced by Brian Stanish from Chicago: “And now Twitter will censor accounts based on requests from governments. What if this happened before the Arab Spring?”; and Berlin-based Gregory Riley: “Freedom of speech means allowing the views that you despize.”
But Twitter’s problem was summarized by EFF’s Eva Galperin back in January: “Twitter's increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions.”