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Twitter Blocks Germans’ Access to Neo-Nazi Group Twitter Blocks Germans’ Access to Neo-Nazi Group
(about 9 hours later)
BERLIN — Twitter has blocked users in Germany from access to the account of a neo-Nazi group that is banned by the government, renewing concerns about the future of free speech on the site. BERLIN — Twitter waded into potentially perilous territory on Thursday when it blocked users in Germany from access to the account of a neo-Nazi group that is banned by the government here.
The decision to block access to the group’s account here was the first time that Twitter acted on a policy known as “country-withheld content,” announced in January, which the company says is meant to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws. The move was the first time that Twitter acted on a policy known as “country-withheld content,” announced in January, in which it will block an account at the request of a government. But the company cracked open the gates to a complex new era in which it will increasingly have to referee legal challenges to the deluge of posts that has made the site so popular.
“Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” Alex Macgillivray, the company’s general counsel, posted on Twitter Thursday morning in Germany. A German government spokesman confirmed in an e-mail that it was the first time the policy had been used. The company said the goal was to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws. “Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” Alexander Macgillivray, the company’s chief lawyer, wrote on Twitter.
German authorities in the state of Lower Saxony last month banned the group, Besseres Hannover, which means “better Hannover.” The German police requested in a letter posted online by Twitter that the group’s account be shut down entirely. Instead, only access in Germany was blocked. A German spokesman for the company confirmed in an e-mail that it was the first time the policy had been used, although Twitter does not as a matter of policy announce government requests to block an account. In a “transparency report” issued earlier this year, the company said it had received six such requests but had not, for reasons it did not specify, acted upon them.
“It’s not a great thing, but it’s a way of minimizing censorship,” said Jillian C. York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. “It’s better for Twitter if they can keep countries happy without having to take the whole thing down.” Uwe Schünemann, the interior minister for the state of Lower Saxony, where the neo-Nazi group is based, applauded the decision to block the Twitter feed, calling it in a statement “an important step.”
Twitter users outside Germany can still view the neo-Nazi group’s 1,010 posted messages, many of which are about government suppression and the influence of financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. Many of the messages include links to the group’s blog, which has been closed down. Twitter neither shut down the group’s account nor deleted the group’s posts. It blocked them for users only in Germany, who see a message that reads “Blocked” and “This account has been withheld in Germany,” along with a link to more information about the policy.
In part because of its Nazi past, Germany has a quite different approach to free speech than that of the United States, where the First Amendment provides broad protections. In Germany, use of Nazi symbols and slogans can be criminally prosecuted, and people with expertise concerning far-right groups in the country often point out that extremist Web sites are hosted on servers in the United States. The decision to block the German feed was a relatively easy one, given that the group is banned and that the use of Nazi symbols and slogans can be criminally prosecuted. The more difficult question is how broadly and under what rules the policy will be applied by a company with users around the world.
But much of the appeal of Twitter to its users relies on the wide-open nature of the exchanges: sometimes profane, often silly, but for activists in repressive countries, also a deadly serious business. The announcement of the country-withheld content policy prompted significant outrage among users. Twitter employees are not combing through the hundreds of millions of messages posted each day searching for offensive material, but are responding only to government requests, beholden to free-expression laws in the countries in which it operates. That makes the company potentially subject to manipulation by authoritarian governments, rights advocates say.
Commenting on the message posted by Mr. Macgillivray, a user named Pam Spevak wrote simply: “Slippery slope ...” “Where it really will be dangerous is in repressive regimes where Twitter is a very important means of communication between political dissenters, and where laws are interpreted by people who would interpret them in a politically biased fashion,” said Svetlana Mintcheva, the director of programs at the National Coalition Against Censorship in New York. “What, for instance, if the president of Belarus decides to suppress the tweets of a theater company which is critical of him?”
Authoritarian governments may wish to stifle the voices of dissidents just as ardently as German officials hope to silence the extreme right. In some countries, religious leaders may seek to prohibit messages they deem to be blasphemous.
Twitter is far from alone in negotiating these rules. Both Facebook and YouTube, owned by Google, complied with requests from German officials to take down content associated with the neo-Nazi group, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Lower Saxony said. Facebook and Google have long scoured content for keywords that suggest illegal material.
Last month, Google blocked access in some countries to a video on YouTube that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and touched off violent protests. The company has a policy of removing what it deems to be hate speech.
Twitter was sharply criticized over the summer after it suspended the account of a British journalist who wrote harshly about the Olympic broadcasts of NBC, a corporate sponsor. Twitter reinstated the account and apologized. The episode highlighted the tensions that Twitter faces as it tries to make money without alienating fans, who see the site as a public commons.
Twitter’s decision on the neo-Nazi group generated little controversy in Germany. In part because of its Nazi past, Germany has a different approach to free speech than that of the United States, where the First Amendment provides broad protections. People with expertise in far-right groups in Germany often point out that their Web sites are hosted on servers in the United States.
The authorities in Lower Saxony banned the neo-Nazi group, Besseres Hannover, or Better Hanover, last month. Mr. Schünemann, the interior minister, said members of the group used “Pied Piper methods” to lure young people into their orbit, including distributing a right-wing magazine outside schools. They harassed, threatened and even attacked migrants, and were suspected of sending right-wing messages to a government official of Turkish background.
On the day the group was banned, Sept. 25, the police searched 27 locations, confiscating computers, cellphones, two handguns, a machete and a flag with a swastika on it. On the same day, the police sent a letter to Twitter requesting that it shut down the group’s account, under the name @hannoverticker.
As part of an effort at transparency, the company posted the German request online. Twitter users outside Germany can still view the group’s more than 1,000 posts, many of which are about government suppression and the influence of financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. Many of the messages include links to the group’s blog, which has been shut down.
Not everyone was pleased with Twitter’s decision. “Anyone with a little knowledge can get around it with a proxy server,” said Stephan Porada, who writes about the Internet for the German online magazine Netzwelt. Mr. Porada said that he was against the spread of neo-Nazi propaganda but that he was concerned that the blocking of users and messages could grow.
Jillian C. York, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, said: “It’s not a great thing, but it’s a way of minimizing censorship. It’s better for Twitter if they can keep countries happy without having to take the whole thing down.”
Blocking the neo-Nazi group, though, may have only brought it more attention. Besseres Hannover had posted no new messages after it was banned, but on Thursday someone from the group returned to Twitter and wrote in English, “Look at this regime: They gossip viciously about china and russia but noone about them! freedom for #germany!” The feed also gained more than 200 followers over the course of the day.

Stefan Pauly contributed reporting from Berlin, and Somini Sengupta from San Francisco.