Tweets From A Country Where Twitter Doesn’t Fly

Social Media And International Borders

by Paul Grimsley

What does it mean when the US President can tweet from within a country where the citizens are forbidden from using Twitter? Some of those little blue birds escaped through VPNs, but the government is cracking down on those.

It’s hard to have an ally who has human rights issues, especially when the alliance with them is a tactical necessity. Maybe. Maybe it is just an issue that you don’t broach.

Google and its search engine tweaking for countries like China has come under scrutiny and has been criticized by human rights organizations. It seems to go against the company ethos of improving people’s lives, and programming the environment for positive change. But does a company have any leeway when the local rules are outright suppressive? What good would it be to refuse to service the country?

Probably, it’s about as easy as a President bringing it up when trade deals are important, when negotiations to control a destabilized region are important. An American President has to put the well-being of the planet over the concerns of a sovereign nation’s citizens, you might argue. But the thing is, if the American enterprise is about liberty and democracy for all, which, given the role that has been adopted as the world’s policeman, it must be, how do you sidestep the issue?

It is interesting that politics and social media are more inextricably linked than they have ever been — and how the way that both of them affect the flow of information, and what ramifications that has for citizens of countries the world over.

Human rights aren’t seemingly on the agenda for this visit. Twitter can’t ignore their role in it quite so easily though. How far should social media go to protect its users? How much should hate speech be vetted? Should it? Should hate groups get an equal platform? Should tweets be allowed for one person while a whole nation is denied that freedom?

One rule for one and one rule for the other is as much of an economic issue in China as anywhere else it seems. And how would it have played if China had tried to limit the Twittering of Twitter’s biggest star? It may have provoked an international incident.