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"Thailand's army has warned\u00A0users of social media in the country that it will\u00A0shut down websites and services if they\u00A0are used to excessively criticize the military coup that it staged on Thursday.\r\n\r\nThe army took 14 national TV stations and as many as 3,000 radio stations off-air this week as it implemented martial law before\u00A0seizing power from the elected government. While it forced one national TV station to suspend a YouTube feed\u00A0that was\u00A0maintained after terrestrial broadcasting was suspended, the Thai army has left the Internet largely untouched. However, it has summoned the country's ISPs to a meeting today.\r\n\r\nThailand has not been afraid to censor social media in the past. The then-government blocked YouTube in 2006, due to the presence of videos violating its l\u00E8se-majest\u00E9 laws that\u00A0prevent criticism of the country\u2019s king and royal family; it previously tried to remove more than 10,000 Facebook pages that violated the same law.\r\n\r\nThailand was the first country to publicly back the censorship feature that Twitter introduced two years ago, but it remains to be seen if the coup-makers will act on the social media threat that was made during a public broadcast in the early hours of Friday morning.\r\n\r\nThere are over 25 million registered Facebook users in Thailand, and\u00A0messaging app Line boasts more than 20 million downloads in\u00A0the country. The number of Twitter users is unknown, but Thai is estimated to be\u00A0the twelfth most-used language on the service.\r\n\r\nImage via\u00A0Leon Neal / AFP / Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/05/23/thailands-army-threatens-block-social-media-response-criticism-military-coup/>