London, Jan 27 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country-by-country basis.

In its blog, Twitter — which had more than 100 million users till September 2011 — said it could “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”. But the removed content would be available to the rest of the world, BBC reported.

Earlier, when Twitter removed a tweet, it would disappear worldwide.

In the blog post titled “Tweets Must Flow”, Twitter said that its worldwide growth meant entering countries “that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression”.

France and Germany ban pro-Nazi content, the BBC report said.

“Starting today (Friday), we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” the company said.

“We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld,” it said.

Twitter also acknowledged it would not be able to operate in all countries. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there,” it said.

The website is blocked in China, where a local alternative called Weibo has become very popular.