The kingdom of Thailand is the first country in the world that has agreed to Twitter’s recent controversial move that allows certain countries to censor tweets, and the Thai authorities have also done their bit to endorse this new policy in a public announcement. According to ICT permanent secretary Jeerawan Boonperm who told the Bangkok Post that this move was a ”welcome development”, it goes in line with the government’s stance that continues to uphold the utmost reverence for their revered King. After all, it was just in 2011 that the Thai government contacted Facebook, sending in a request to remove over 10,000 pages which violated its lese majeste law that prevents criticism of any sort of the country’s king and royal family. This led to the famous blocking of YouTube slightly more than half a decade ago, and the moment all the offending videos were removed from YouTube, said service was then made available again in Thailand.
No doubt with this precedent set, it comes across as no surprise to see the Thai government welcome Twitter’s new move, and this might just see other countries that saw the effects of social networks’ roles in the Arab Spring make a quick move to support Twitter’s stance. What do you think – should social networks and micro blogging sites be regulated?
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