Twitter blocks Nazi account in landmark move
Website blocks German group’s account at request of police, pitting censorship concerns against local hate speech laws.
Micro-blogging site Twitter said it had blocked a neo-Nazi group’s account at the request of German police, in what it called a global first for the company.
In a move pitting censorship concerns against national laws on hate speech, Twitter said on Thursday it had deployed the tool developed this year to comply with the request by the German authorities.
“We announced the ability to withhold content back in January,” Alex Macgillivray, Twitter’s chief lawyer, said in a tweet posted on the website.
“We’re using it now for the first time re: a group deemed illegal in Germany.”
Twitter’s spokesman in Germany, Dirk Hensen, confirmed the decision in an email to the AFP news agency.
In a separate tweet, Macgillivray posted a link to a letter from the police in the northern German state of Lower Saxony asking Twitter to block the account of Besseres Hannover, a far-right outfit that was outlawed last month.
The account is still visible on Twitter with the handle @hannoverticker and calling itself “Das nationale Informationsportal aus Hannover” (The national information portal from Hanover).
But no message since the date of the ban, September 25, is visible in Germany, and the group’s website has also been blocked or deleted.
‘Narrowly and transparently’
Prosecutors in Lower Saxony have launched a probe against around 20 members of Besseres Hannover on charges of inciting racial hatred and creating a criminal organisation.
The group is in particular suspected of sending a link to a threatening video by email to the state’s social affairs minister, Aygul Ozkan, who is of Turkish origin.
Macgillivray said in a further tweet that Twitter aimed to restrict as little as possible on its website while complying with the law.
“Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” he said.
He posted a link to the company’s policy on “Country-Withheld Content” explaining the line it draws between free speech and legal compliance.
“With hundreds of millions of Tweets posted every day around the world, our goal is to respect our users’ expression, while also taking into consideration applicable local laws,” the California-based company said.
“Many countries, including the United States, have laws that may apply to tweets and/or Twitter account content.
“In our continuing effort to make our services available to users everywhere, if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorised entity, it may be necessary to reactively withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.”
It said once it received an official request to withhold content, it would notify users immediately explaining why their posts could pose legal problems for Twitter, and noted that users may challenge the decision.