Twitter and Russia in war of words over censorship

Steven Loeb · June 23, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/37ad

Russia says Twitter agreed to block 12 "extremist" accounts, Twitter denies it did any such thing

Twitter just got gone dealing with all of that nonsense over in Turkey, and now it looks like it might have another authoritarian regime to deal with, this time in Russia.

Only day after Colin Crowell, Twitter’s public policy chief, met with Alexander Zharov, who is the head of Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor, Russia and Twitter are already at odds over what exactly happened in that meeting.

According to Russia, Twitter is going to help the Russians restrict the access of  accounts that have been deemed "extremist."

"Following the meeting, the management of Twitter transmitted detailed information on 12 accounts microblogging service, the content of which has been recognized as extremist decisions of the General Prosecutor's Office," Roskomnadzor said in an official press release, "Roscomnadzor expects a positive decision by the administration of the resource to delete these accounts or restricting access to them on the territory of Russia."

The news was also reported in a number of news agencies, including Rapsi, which is the Russian Legal Information Agency, and Russian newspaper Rg.ru.

Twitter, however, is denying that such discussion of the topic ever took place, telling Bloomberg in a statement to Bloomberg on Monday, “That claim is inaccurate, as we did not agree to remove the accounts."

Even before this incident, Twitter was already facing problems in Russia, as the country has begun to crack down on the Internet, and social media in particular.

First, Russia's parliament passed a law that required social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for six months. That legislation goes into effect at the beginning of August.

President Vladimir Putin then called Twitter a "CIA project" and warned his citizens not to use the service. That was then followed by another move by Putin, in which he signed a law that required bloggers to register with the government. That same month, Maxim Ksenzov, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, actually threatened to take the site down, calling it a “political” tool.

“We can block Twitter or Facebook tomorrow for several minutes,” he said at the time. “We do not see any risks in that.” 

Ksenzov eventually backtracked, and Twitter was not actually shut down. But these incidents do highlight how tenuous the relationship between social media and countries that want to restrict free and open expression among their citizenry.

If part of Russia's terms for making a deal involve censorship of certain parties and organizations, it should heed the warnings over what happened to LinkedIn when it struck a deal to enter China earlier this year.

After LinkedIn made its China announcement, the company also came under fire after it admitted that it was only able to operate there because it complied with Chinese censorship laws. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner defended the decision in a blog post written shortly after.

"As a condition for operating in the country, the government of China imposes censorship requirements on Internet platforms. LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship," Weiner said. 

"At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIn’s absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others on our global platform, thereby limiting the ability of individual Chinese citizens to pursue and realize the economic opportunities, dreams and rights most important to them."

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have to thread a fine line when it comes to censorship, one that they have stepped over more than a few times. If Twitter were to concede to Russian demands, I imagine the backlash in the United States would be quite harsh.

Twitter could not be reached for comment on the reports. 

(Image source: patdollard.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

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Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

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At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.