Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets to conform to the demands of specific countries.
"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content," Twitter's management said in a blog post.
"Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries' limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world," Twitter added.
In the interest of transparency, Twitter said, it has built a mechanism to inform users in the event that a Tweet is being blocked.
"One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user's voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow," Twitter concluded.
Twitter's move renew questions about how the social media platform will handle issues of free speech as it rapidly expands its global user base.
However, Twitter would be banned outright in many countries if it did not agree to restrict Tweets.
Internet search leader Google has been also posting a censorship notice whenever a search result had to be removed, complying to local laws.
Twitter also plans to the share the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the chillingeffects.org website.