Twitter, Censorship | featured news

Twitter on Thursday announced that it is now able to block tweets that run afoul of certain countries' restrictions on speech, but that has prompted backlash from users who fear the micro-blogging service will honor takedown requests from repressive regimes.

Amazon's Kindle is proving popular in China because it allows users to log on to banned websites.

Barack Obama spoke to a group of Chinese students tonight at a town hall in Shanghai. The meeting was streamed live, worldwide on the Whitehouse website and on the Whitehouse's Facebook page. He was asked a limited number of questions by the audience and one was about Twitter, which has been blocked in China since July.

With traditional reporting silenced and with e-mail and Web services shut down, much of the information about the election protests in Iran was coming through social media sites.

Chinese security forces blanketed Tiananmen Square on Wednesday ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, a day after Twitter and Hotmail Internet services in China were blocked.

Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square which cost hundreds of lives.