Recently, twitter announced a new policy that restrict illegal
expression in that country according to each country's law. Many
twitterian resisted against the announcement on the
Internet. People criticize that it is a decision making freedom of
expression reducing. Some twitterian started a movement to stop using
twitter because it betrayed
them. However, I think Internet, democracy, freedom of speech are not a
simple matter. We need to more considerate about this problem. Twitter's recent new policy is
declaration which they will obey the rule of each country. Who
criticize the declaration that "obey the law"? No one can not force
certain corporation not to
confirm the law. The problem is that the levels of law are very
different country-by-country. North Korea's level, China's level, my
country (South Korea)'s level, the
U.S.'s level are different in respect of freedom of speech. Expression
which is nothing can be illegal in other nation. For example, praising
Nazi in my country is not
anything serious but it will be able to crime in German. On the
contrary to this, it doesn't matter that people praise late Kim Jong
Il (was North Korean leader) in
German. However, it will seem very uncomfortable in North Korea. What
bans in common around the world is just child pornography etc. This is
an extremely small part
of many expression on the Internet. I think these differences appeared
because each countries have their own culture, historical experience, diversity of
development of democracy. In these circumstances, criticizing twitter's
new policy seemes that they should unconditionally protect freedom of
speech ignoring level of
differences. When a person posts a piece of writing about child
pornography, bomb-making instructions, a state secret on the Internet,
do you think no restraint is
needed? Probably, there is no many agreeing these things. These speech
need to be obviously restrained. Then, on what basis, should the speech
be banned? Twitter's
management should decided arbitrarily the basis and level of the speech?
I thinkg it is not true. Only company can not decide the level of
freedom of expression that is
one of the human rights. Ultimately, it can not help being based on the
law. Unfortunately, it seems clear that some autocrat will restrict
twitter according to the law that they made.
-Hye Jung
This is a very interesting post! I did not know that restrictions were being placed on a public website that is based on people saying what ever they want to say. In my opinion this defeats the purpose of the website in its entirety. If people cannot say what the want to say on twitter, what is the point to even use the site? This could be bad news for twitter.
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