Twitter working to thwart censorship

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams said the company was working on hacks to stop any blocking by foreign governments.

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.

Williams said Twitter had an advantage in evading government censors over a singular website as its streams are distributed through a number of outlets, including syndicating sites and mobile applications.

Twitter was among a number of social networking sites who were asked to make a statement about censorship at the Davos conference.

The debates comes on the heels of a declaration from Google that it would discontinue to censor search results in China, following allegations of cyber-attacks origination from the country.

Technology is increasingly playing a more important role in free speech.

Last year Twitter was used heavily in reporting first-hand post-election oppression in Iran, and subsequently used to organize rebellion.

Williams said he did not want to give details of the changes, but said he was hopeful for technological ways to thwart censorship.