What are the effects on marketers from Twitter censoring some tweets?

There has been a lot made of online censorship lately with SOPA and PIPA floating around Washington. Twitter has now found itself in a so-called censorship battle over its sudden move to start “withholding” certain tweets. And despite already feeling the backlash, the social giant is standing firm in its stance. In a recent blog post, Twitter said that it has given itself the ability to withhold posts published on its service from users in certain countries, while still making them available to users in other countries. The social networking company also said that it will notify users of when specific content has been withheld from them, and explain why. This move appears to be a part of Twitter’s plan to distance its service from countries where free speech is restricted. Twitter explained in the blog post that along its path of global growth, it is entering countries that have ideas that differ from its own in the way of freedom of expression. The post actually said that it will not be able to exist in some countries, and noted how others have restrictions on content supporting Nazis and other controversial matters. Many observers are calling this recent move a full about–face from Twitter’s previous position. The popular social network has long been a advocate of free speech, and recently been used as a freedom tool of sorts in the Arab Spring rallies and other protests. Business Implications of Censored Tweets At this point, Twitter’s crusade to censor or withhold tweets shouldn’t be anything marketers have to worry about. In fact, this new approach seems to stem from the ongoing controversy of copyright issues. According to reports, the vast majority of the tweets the service has censored have resulted from complaints filed via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Like Google, Twitter has been quite busy lately fulfilling removal requests and making note of it on the Chilling Effects website to accommodate existing copyright laws. This will likely be the focus of Twitter moving forward, so we may hear more about tweets being censored in the coming months. On the backlash note, Twitter’s new stance on censorship has been criticized on an international scale. There was talk of a protest of the service built around the “#TwitterBlackout” hashtag, while one blogger questioned whether the micro-blogging site was “selling out ” the internet community. Critics started looking at a potential pay-to-play scenario when it was revealed that Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal made a substantial investment to the tune of $300 million in Twitter last December. Interesting stuff indeed. Twitter cracking down on certain content in a select few countries should not present any problems to the global marketing community - unless the censorship efforts expand into its main markets. Regardless of the motives, the San Francisco-based company will need to be very careful in order to keep user revolt movements to a minimum.