The censorship issue among social networking sites has reached a whole new level. Brazil seems to be the first country to apply new censorship rules to Twitter. A year ago Twitter posted on its blog stating that,

The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.

This however, does not seem to be the case with Twitter’s growing international popularity. On the 27^th of January 2012, Twitter announced in its official blog post that a restrictive policy will be followed, where objectionable content posted on the site will be censored, but only in the country that has a problem with it. In our opinion, that’s a pretty smart thing to do!

It definitely makes sense. How do we exercise freedom of speech if everyone seems to have a problem with it? So if the government of your country has an issue with a particular post on Twitter, no worries, it will be censored only in that country itself. This isn’t a pioneered move on behalf of Twitter as Google has been following this policy for quite some time now. The only difference is that they haven’t made a public announcement yet.

According to CNN in its official news site the government of Brazil has filed a suit on the against Twitter with a concern to suspend user accounts of people leaking out information about police road blocks and hiding spots. This seems to make sense as tipping off offenders with the help of a social networking site is not helpful if the country is trying to reduce the crime rate in the country.

The government, in a lawsuit at a Federal Court in Goais, is demanding a fine of 500,000 Reais per day when Twitter and the offenders do not comply to the policies of Brazil. OUCH!

Well, it is safe to say that this seems to be the best thing to do as Brazil’s government attorneys’ state that these checkpoints set up by the police,

serve to combat other serious crimes, such as car theft, the transport of illegal weapons and drug trafficking.