Twitter announced today that it can now block tweets on a country-by-country basis, that means Twitter can now block content which violates local laws without blocking the content for the entire world. Twitter already censors some content based on DMCA takedown requests, but till now this censorship is global.

Twitter says “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some countries want to block specific information, for example France and Germany want to block pro-Nazi content as twitter explains, in these type of cases now twitter can block content only in that country allowing the rest of the world to see. Twitter will also notify users if their content is blocked and the takedown requests will go to the ChillingEffects.org/twitter website like what Google does for censorship requests.

Twitter has not yet used this ability to restrict any tweets, going forward it may do so based on local laws and government requests to block content.