Social-network update: Facebook up; Twitter slow?

an announcement made by Twitter on Thursday about a change in its police for withholding tweets when they violate a country's local laws. Until now, when a tweet had to be taken down, Twitter would have to remove the content entirely from the site. Under the new plan, it can be taken down on a country-by-country basis. Under the new policy, Twitter will also report taken-down tweets to Chilling Effects, a Web site that maintains a database of cease-and-desist notices sent to Internet users and providers.

in a blog yesterday that the new plan is intended to promote freedom of expression, transparency, and accountability. But users took it a different way--accusing the company of local-level censorship.

called the policy a violation of international speech standards and the boycott movement took off. Users took to Twitter hashtags like #TwitterBlackout and#TwitterCensored to air concerns about Twitter, the self-proclaimed champion of free expression, cooperating with local governments. They also tweeted fears that this could be setting the stage for Twitter to enter countries like China, where the service is now blocked and where Internet companies have to work with authorities to filter information deemed illegal.

told The Wall Street Journal late Friday night that this is no "policy change" and that Twitter "philosophy is still the same" about protecting free speech on the Web. He added that this has "nothing to do with China" and further clarified that the company doesn't filter content before it is posted. Rather, it responds to requests after users have posted them.

Zeynep Tufekci, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, adds, "In my opinion, with this policy, Twitter is fighting to protect free speech on Twitter as best it possibly can."

the movement against the SOPA-like ACTA) may have interfered with earlier reported plans of Anonymous-related hackers to target Facebook today with a distributed denial-of-service attack.