There's been a lot of talk recently about
Twitter's decision to start censoring users' tweets in China.
Twitter CEO Dick
Costolo defends his decision by saying that the new policy aims to promote
transparency, not to enable government censorship. “You can’t reside in countries and not
operate within the law," he says.
Maybe I'm out of
line, but that's the most ridiculous excuse for a bad policy I've ever heard.
"Ethics"
implicitly regulates areas and details of behavior that lie beyond governmental control. By claiming that they are
relying on oppressive authoritarian regimes to define the parameters of
acceptable business practice, Costolo is in essence allowing these regimes to
police his own sense of business ethics.
In fact, he's going so far as to let them define his ethics for him, at
the expense of not only the Chinese people, but the reputation of a company
that had always seemed to value free and open communication.
Sad.
