Flash: Twitter did what it did on the former US President Donald Trump to Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Indian government. Trump was portrayed as an anarchist and dictator against free speech due to his allegation on left-leaning social media platforms.
Twitter says it has permanently suspended accounts that were in “clear violations of Twitter’s Rules” in response to Indian govt requests. In a way snubbing the Indian Government request to suspend and withhold accounts indulging in flaming riots in the country. The ball is in PM Narendra Modi’s government’s court to walk the talk on national security.
Twitter’s response said : Legal requests from the Indian Government
Separate to our enforcement under the Twitter Rules, over the course of the last 10 days, Twitter has been served with several separate blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. Out of these, two were emergency blocking orders that we temporarily complied with but subsequently restored access to the content in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law. After we communicated this to MeitY, we were served with a non-compliance notice. To set the record straight.
Here is a list of actions we have taken as a result of these blocking orders.
We took steps to reduce the visibility of the hashtags containing harmful content, which included prohibiting them from trending on Twitter and appearing as recommended search terms.
We took a range of enforcement actions including permanent suspension certain cases – against more than 500 accounts escalated across all MeitY orders for clear violations of Twitter’s Rules.
Separately, today, we have withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders under our Country Withheld Content policy within India only.
These accounts continue to be available outside of India. Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law, and, in keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians. To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. We informed MeitY of our enforcement actions today, February 10, 2021. We will continue to maintain dialogue with the Indian government and respectfully engage with them.
We will continue to advocate for the right of free expression on behalf of the people we serve. We are exploring options under Indian law – both for Twitter and for the accounts that have been impacted. We remain committed to safeguarding the health of the conversation occurring on Twitter, and strongly believe that the Tweets should flow.
Conclusion:
The American social media tech gain has done what it did to the previous US president ‘Donald Trump’ on PM Modi. Twitter will allow anti-India elements to operate freely in the name of free speech. Only time will tell whether PM Modi will be the next President Trump who was overthrown with the help of Social Media.
