U.S. Twitter users may have forgotten that “freedom of speech” does not apply in all countries. The developers who created Twitter may have found out the hard way that censorship is something to be respected in other countries as well as their personal beliefs. It is not necessarily up to Twitter on who is banned from using the service rather than the actual country’s web rules.
China users
The main country that falls under the ban is China. In fact China has a system of “web police” who constantly monitor the new programs that are deemed illegal with the country’s laws. There are multiple keywords banned daily in China, even those who suggest peaceful political protests. Every user in China must register their real-name as a user and even then there will be some form of censorship. Although for those with a mentality – if there’s a will there’s a way- they have found other proxy servers to operate Twitter.
Terrorists and Twitter
While the creators of Twitter maintain their ideals of freedom of speech; they also facilitate freedom of safe speech. There has been reported abuse used among those who want to cause harm against the U.S. and have been utilizing Twitter as a means of attack. Under certain cyber laws already put in place; Twitter must mandate these same laws with in their social media platform and do have a right to censor or even ban any users who violates these fed enforced laws.
Other banned accounts
It seems the spam trend is more accessible in other countries besides U.S. Twitter users do not tolerate spam or scams and it seems these users are fighting back. For those who have linked their email to their Twitter account will receive new alerts they have a follower. For anyone who feels suspicious of a new “friends” intent should report it. Again, if there’s a will there’s way; which goes for spammers needing your internal link with in Twitter to latch on to.
Twitter wants to stress that it does want a platform that allows all users across the globe to communicate in all forms of speech. However; this U.S. based social media platform is finding out that is easy said than done. Twitter has been banned from China for three years and perhaps may follow Google’s footsteps to bypass the censorship. Google moved its China translation to Hong Kong and in turn China users have a little more freedom of usage, or until that is policed as well.