Over the past few years social media has transformed the proliferation of information, particularly mainstream news. It’s now almost more likely that you’ll first learn about breaking news on your Facebook feed or Twitter account than from a legitimate news source. That’s all about to change.

Following a slight, but not at all insignificant policy tweak, Twitter now has the ability to censor Tweets by country. Basically if you tweet something that’s deemed too controversial or illegal in a certain country, it’ll be censored in that country but still entirely visible elsewhere.

Previously Twitter only had the ability to block tweets globally, so that nobody could see them. They chose never to exercise this power. The big cats up at the top of Twitter are claiming that if they did not introduce these new censorship measures, Twitter would not be able to exist at all in certain countries. Thankfully these new policies are only being implemented now, because had they been in place about a year ago it’s very likely that there would still be a number or dictators roaming the streets.

As a small consolation prize Twitter say any censored tweets will be clearly marked and will also have a link to an explanation.

[Source: Marketing Land, Twitter]