Twitter计划用技术对抗审查制度

Twitter works on technology to evade censors

By John Gapper in Davos

Twitter, the internet social network, is developing technology it hopes will prevent the Chinese and Iranian governments being able to censor its users.

Evan Williams, the chief executive and co-founder of Twitter, which has been credited with helping anti-government protesters in Iran to organise resistance, said software developers were working on “interesting hacks” to stop any blocking by foreign governments.

Mr Williams, speaking at the World Economic Forum, said he admired Google for its decision last month to confront China over censorship and cyberattacks on its service, but said Twitter was too small to take a similar stand.

“We are partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well,” he said. “The most productive way to fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is against what we are about. I am hopeful there are technological ways around these barriers.”

Mr Williams said Twitter had an advantage in evading government censors through operating as a network of internet and mobile applications, rather than as a single website. “Twitter is a network that is accessed in thousands of ways.”

Mr Williams was among executives of social networks, including MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, which were challenged in a debate in Davos to make a statement against censorship. He gave the clearest account of how his company intended to resist surveillance.

Earlier this month, Google declared it was ending self-censorship of its Chinese language search engine in protest at what it said were attempts from China to hack into its networks, and those of other US technology companies.

Mr Williams did not want to give details of the technology being developed in order to avoid giving clues to governments that wanted to block its service, which allows users to post updates of up to 140 characters to those who follow them. The company said the technology was being worked on by “third-party developers” rather than the company itself.

Twitter网站表示，将进行技术研发，以阻止中国和伊朗政府对其互联网用户进行审查。Twitter的首席执行官威廉姆斯在达沃斯世界经济论坛上表示，他敬佩谷歌面对中国的互联网封锁以及服务器攻击所采取的态度，但公司太小，以至于不能采取相同的方式。他表示，Twitter希望能找到技术上的方法绕过壁垒。威廉姆斯还表示不会披露技术细节，以防止给那些试图封锁Twitter服务器的国家提供线索。