If you had not visited the site “Chilling Effects” it is high time you did.
[dropcap size=big]C[/dropcap]hilling effects was formed in 2001 by a group of internet activists that were concerned with the growing number of “cease and dessist” requests being sent globally. The major concern was that this was having a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech. On this website you will be able to view large archives of request notices sent from courts and governments around the world to service providers accross the internet requesting (among other things) to ban users on twitter.
Sparking my personal interest in this right now is that I am located in Turkey for the week so I decided to do some research on some of the more well known twitter bans. Below is what it looks like if your in Turkey and wanna follow one of these contreversial accounts.
As can be seen from the feature image of this article the requests keep coming and it seems that twitter is moving towards a solution more sympathetic to the removal of individual accounts rather then suffering nation wide bans in which less threatening expressions by the masses can be totally shut down on twitter. This can be seen by the fact that twitter has now employed it`s country withheld content tool in Pakistan for the first time.
“Twitter has deployed its Country Withheld Content Tool in Pakistan for the first time. Chilling Effects’ database now contains five requests to Twitter from the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, each of which asks for the removal of “blasphemous” or “un-ethical” tweets. The first request is dated May 5th, and the most recent on May 14th”
A full list of the requests is available here.