On Thursday, Twitter announced plans to restrict tweets in certain countries. By Friday, some clever folks already figured out an incredibly simple way to circumvent the service's censorship.
Anna Haim of The Next Web explains that Twitter's own Help Center actually reveals the trick.
Here's how it all works.
Since content is going to be blocked on a country-by-country basis, Twitter has to identify the country from which you're viewing tweets. To do this, it relies on your IP address — which means that there are plenty of scenarios in which your country could be misidentified.
Twitter's Help Center provides instructions on how to change your country setting if you believe that your location has been misidentified by the service. All you have to do is head into your "Account Settings" and scroll down until you see the "Country" drop-down menu. There you can select the country from which you're actually viewing tweets.
Or — as you might guess — you can easily fib a little bit and switch the country setting to one in which a particular tweet isn't censored.
Yes, circumventing Twitter's country-by-country censorship is that simple.
So now if you ever spot a grayed-out tweet similar to the example above, you know what to do in order to find out what it says.
Just keep in mind that you have to change the country listed in your "Country" setting, not your "Profile Location."
Related stories:
- The Pope explains the power — and danger — of Twitter
- Twitter tests 'Top News' and 'Top People' in search results
- False reports of Fidel Castro's death spread on Twitter
Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
If you're more interested in Sam Spratt — the guy who made the cute Twitter bird illustration above — then you'll want these Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr links instead.
