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Censorship of Twitter
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Censorship of Twitter
Twitter has been subjected to Internet censorship by governments and other authorities which may take unilateral action to block Internet access to Twitter or its content. The social media platform is currently blocked in China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Twitter is officially blocked in China; however, many Chinese people circumvent the block to use it. Even major Chinese companies and national medias, such as Huawei and CCTV, use Twitter through a government-approved VPN. The official account of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs started tweeting in English in December 2019; meanwhile, Chinese diplomats, embassies and consulates maintained 55 identified accounts on Twitter as of 2019, with over half having been established within the year alone.
In 2010, Cheng Jianping was sentenced to one year in a labor camp for "retweeting" a comment that suggested boycotters of Japanese products should instead attack the Japanese pavilion at Expo 2010. Her fiancé, who posted the initial comment, claims it was actually a satire of anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
According to a Washington Post report, in 2019, state security officials visited some users in China to request them to delete certain tweets. The Chinese police would produce printouts of tweets and advise users to delete either the specific messages or their entire accounts. The New York Times described the process as "unusually broad and punitive". The targets of the crackdown even included lurkers on the platform with very few followers. In 2019, a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison when he returned to China, for posting tweets mocking Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping while in the US.
On July 3, 2020, Twitter announced that all data and information requests for Hong Kong authorities were immediately paused after the Hong Kong national security law, which was imposed by the Chinese government, went into effect. According to the official verdicts as of 2020, at least hundreds of Chinese were sentenced to prison for using Twitter to like, post or share tweets. According to the documents obtained by the New York Times in 2021, Shanghai police were trying to use technology means to find out the true identities of Chinese users of specific accounts on foreign social media, including Twitter. In 2022, Peiter Zatko, Twitter's former head of security, accused Twitter of accepting funding from unnamed "Chinese entities", which gave them access to the information of users in China, and Twitter knew that could endanger these users. Zatko also disclosed that FBI notified Twitter of at least one Chinese agent in the company.
During the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the Iranian government blocked Twitter due to fear of protests being organised. In September 2013, the blocking of both Twitter and Facebook was briefly lifted without notice due to a technical error, but within a day the websites were blocked again.
On February 5, 2021, the military State Administration Council, which assumed power following a coup d'état, ordered mobile and Internet providers to block Twitter and Instagram in the country, after a similar censorship measure was imposed on Facebook. A spokesperson for Twitter subsequently said that the company would "continue to advocate to end destructive government-led shutdowns".
In April 2016, North Korea started to block Twitter "in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information". Anyone who tries to access it without special permission from the North Korean government, including foreign visitors and residents, is subject to punishment.
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Censorship of Twitter
Twitter has been subjected to Internet censorship by governments and other authorities which may take unilateral action to block Internet access to Twitter or its content. The social media platform is currently blocked in China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Twitter is officially blocked in China; however, many Chinese people circumvent the block to use it. Even major Chinese companies and national medias, such as Huawei and CCTV, use Twitter through a government-approved VPN. The official account of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs started tweeting in English in December 2019; meanwhile, Chinese diplomats, embassies and consulates maintained 55 identified accounts on Twitter as of 2019, with over half having been established within the year alone.
In 2010, Cheng Jianping was sentenced to one year in a labor camp for "retweeting" a comment that suggested boycotters of Japanese products should instead attack the Japanese pavilion at Expo 2010. Her fiancé, who posted the initial comment, claims it was actually a satire of anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
According to a Washington Post report, in 2019, state security officials visited some users in China to request them to delete certain tweets. The Chinese police would produce printouts of tweets and advise users to delete either the specific messages or their entire accounts. The New York Times described the process as "unusually broad and punitive". The targets of the crackdown even included lurkers on the platform with very few followers. In 2019, a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison when he returned to China, for posting tweets mocking Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping while in the US.
On July 3, 2020, Twitter announced that all data and information requests for Hong Kong authorities were immediately paused after the Hong Kong national security law, which was imposed by the Chinese government, went into effect. According to the official verdicts as of 2020, at least hundreds of Chinese were sentenced to prison for using Twitter to like, post or share tweets. According to the documents obtained by the New York Times in 2021, Shanghai police were trying to use technology means to find out the true identities of Chinese users of specific accounts on foreign social media, including Twitter. In 2022, Peiter Zatko, Twitter's former head of security, accused Twitter of accepting funding from unnamed "Chinese entities", which gave them access to the information of users in China, and Twitter knew that could endanger these users. Zatko also disclosed that FBI notified Twitter of at least one Chinese agent in the company.
During the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the Iranian government blocked Twitter due to fear of protests being organised. In September 2013, the blocking of both Twitter and Facebook was briefly lifted without notice due to a technical error, but within a day the websites were blocked again.
On February 5, 2021, the military State Administration Council, which assumed power following a coup d'état, ordered mobile and Internet providers to block Twitter and Instagram in the country, after a similar censorship measure was imposed on Facebook. A spokesperson for Twitter subsequently said that the company would "continue to advocate to end destructive government-led shutdowns".
In April 2016, North Korea started to block Twitter "in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information". Anyone who tries to access it without special permission from the North Korean government, including foreign visitors and residents, is subject to punishment.