Twitter Blocks Germans’ Access to Neo-Nazi Group

The decision to block access to the group’s account here was the first time that Twitter acted on a policy known as “country withheld content,” announced in January, which the company says is meant to balance freedom of expression with compliance with local laws.

“Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” said Alex MacGillivray, the company’s general counsel, posted on Twitter Thursday morning in Germany. A German government spokesman confirmed in an e-mail that it was the first time the policy had been used.

German authorities in the state of Lower Saxony last month banned the group, Besseres Hannover, which means better Hannover. The German police requested in a letter posted online by Twitter that the group’s account be shut down entirely. Instead, only access in Germany was blocked.

“It’s not a great thing, but it’s a way of minimizing censorship,” said Jillian C. York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. “It’s better for Twitter if they can keep countries happy without having to take the whole thing down.”

Twitter users outside Germany can still view the neo-Nazi group’s 1,010 posted messages, many of which are about government suppression and the influence of financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. Many of the messages include links to the group’s blog, which has been closed down.

In part because of its Nazi past, Germany has a quite different approach to free speech than that of the United States, where the First Amendment provides broad protections. In Germany, use of Nazi symbols and slogans can be criminally prosecuted, and people with expertise concerning far-right groups in the country often point out that extremist Web sites are hosted on servers in the United States.

But much of the appeal of Twitter to its users relies on the wide-open nature of the exchanges: sometimes profane, often silly, but for activists in repressive countries, also a deadly serious business. The announcement of the country withheld content policy in January prompted significant outrage among users.

Commenting on the message posted by Mr. Macgillivray, the company’s general counsel, a user named Pam Spevak wrote simply: “Slippery slope . . .”