Here's Who's Been Blocked By Twitter's Country-Specific Censorship

Twitter has been cooperating with governments and other authorized reporters for a long time to remove or withhold content that violates those countries’ laws. The company has published those “transparency reports” since 2012. 

Governments' requests to remove an account or withhold it, does not necessarily mean that the content will be vanished from the internet.

Let’s say Twitter users connecting from Germany are unable to view tweets from a far-right British politician who posts Nazi symbols, but the rest of the world will be able to since their laws do not forbid use of such symbols.

As a general rule Twitter does not permit “promotion of violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Also inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.”

However, the content of those withheld accounts were not specified by Twitter, now a BuzzFeed report reveals the details of Twitter’s cooperation with some governments, which are framed by BuzzFeed as “democratic and authoritarian alike”.

Roughly 90% of the total volume originated from only four countries: France, Germany, Russia, and Turkey. 

Turkey continued to submit the most requests, accounting for approximately 45% of the overall worldwide total with the company withholding 204 accounts and 497 tweets only in Turkey.

BuzzFeed examined the usernames, bios, and some of the content posted by the accounts withheld in those countries and found that a significant portion of them espouse Nazi and white nationalist ideology and related imagery in France and Germany, which have relatively strict hate speech laws.

A review of more than 700 accounts withheld in Turkey found that more than 600 belonged to those connected with the PKK and Gulenists, which are listed as terrorist organizations by the Turkish Government.