Twitter doesn't have the power to shut down an entire government trying to spread its ideas. Not by a long shot—the very idea is laughable. Twitter has the power to shut down an entire government trying to spread its ideas via twitter. And that is in no way worrisome; that is a very good thing! If it were impossible for Twitter to do so, that would be worrisome.
It seems fair to block the activities of even entire governments to operate on a platform that is itself blocked from operating normally in that country. Governments are not above reproach or criticism anymore than corporations are. If PRC will not subject itself to fair scrutiny or allow their subjects to participate on Twitter’s platform, then why should Twitter have to play or even allow PRC’s game on their platform, especially when they are blatantly breaking Twitter’s rules and intentionally trying to deceive Twitter’s users.
If not for the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bots are being coordinated to create an illusion of weight for some consensus, things would indeed be murkier. As it is, the PRC is currently acting disingenuously.
To be clear, that's not what Twitter is doing. They specifically state:
"Affected media entities are free to continue to use their Twitter account(s) to organically participate in public conversation"
What they're doing is blocking paid ads by governments and deceptive practices by everyone. But they're fine with governments spreading their ideas on Twitter the old-fashioned way, by tweeting things under their own name and getting lots of likes/retweets.
And, obviously, Twitter has no power whatsoever to shut down governments spreading their ideas the old-fashioned way off of Twitter.
The whole "interference" in US elections on Facebook, for example, was quite possibly blown way out of proportion compared to all the other "interference" happening around the world on Facebook.
For example, why was Facebook called to testify in front of US Congress, but not testify in front of Beijing for spreading misinformation about China?
Many journalists and more important journalistic organizations take this seriously. Doesn’t mean there aren’t bad apples or mistakes. It just means there is a moral guideline to fall back on.
[0] https://www.ifj.org/who/rules-and-policy/global-charter-of-e...
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/03/twitter-was-going-to-ban-c...
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/10/when-white-na...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/twitter-permanently-bans-ale...
Spencer is still active on Twitter where he still posts white supremacy stuff.
And a new policy banning all state-controlled media from advertising: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/advertisi...
I think this is an interesting example of recent discussions about the disproportionate influence of social media companies on information. Obviously, it doesn't seem right for a government to manipulate public conversation. But it's also worrisome that a single company has the power to shut down an entire government trying to spread its ideas. In this instance it's well justified, but it feels a little scary that the flow of information is policed by a couple private individuals with very little oversight. I don't have any particular opinions here on what might need to change, if anything - just thinking out loud.