Twitter

Twitter's CEO calls his company the "people's news network."  Since its creation in 2006, it's spread all over the world as a platform for about 500 million comments by its users per day.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, one in three internet users was on Twitter in 2013. A Saudi scientist says it gave them a way to discuss taboo topics in spite of government censorship and media they don't trust. But Twitter isn't used much for dissent there anymore after the government started making Twitter-related arrests.

In fact, Twitter Inc. started receiving requests to censor certain things within a country - which they have sometimes done. In 2014 they blocked a pro-Ukrainian feed for Russia. And companies like Geofeedia and Snaptrends have built a business on organizing "tweets" and selling them. Their customers may include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, and others that suppress online speech.

Can Twitter keep up its profile of free speech defender? Maybe only where free speech is the law.

(from "In Case of Low Revenue," Bloomberg Businessweek,  Oct. 31 issue)