Folks worried that Twitter isn't a universal fan of free speech have some more ammunition. The company has decided to use its newish "country withheld content" policy to block access to the tweets of a neo-Nazi group in Germany.
"The account and all its content have been blocked for Germany, the content remains visible to Twitter users in other countries," a spokesman for Twitter said. The decision to block the tweets came at the request of city of Hanover. Twitter, for its part, is trying to be transparent about the move. Here's Alex MacGillivray, the company’s general counsel, on the move:
Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID . More info support.twitter.com/articles/20169
— Alex Macgillivray (@amac) October 18, 2012
Still, some users are worried about what this move by the social media site means in the long term. First they came for the German neo-Nazi's tweets, and all that.