It is not the first time the microblogging site Twitter has a run-in with high-profile personalities or political leaders in India. The list is long. It also includes Home Minister Amit Shah and Bollywood actress Kananga Ranaut.
The twitter is facing the heat from the Government after it tagged BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra’s tweet on a Congress toolkit as “manipulated”.
Twitter faced a huge outrage from netizens on social media for “tampering” with the accounts of Amit Shah and Subramanian Swamy last November to which the Twitter had to issue regrets immediately.
The microblogging site had removed the display picture of Amit Shah on November 13 last year in response to a “report from the copyright holder. The image was restored after a while. A similar situation took place when with Swamy’s banner picture was restored only after a legal threat to Twitter India.
Twitter initially responded that there were complaints on Shah and Swamy’s images allegedly with an alleged copyright holder from an account from Bangladesh which on investigations turned out to be a fake one. Twitter apologised on both the accounts.
The Parliamentary panel on IT had grilled the Twitter representatives in India early this year for blocking Home Minister’s official account in November.
The Twitter executives were questioned why Shah’s Twitter account was blocked and who gave them the right to do so to which Twitter officials explained that they had to block the account temporarily as there was a copyright issue regarding a picture posted.
On the day the issue of blocking of Amit Shah’s account was noticed, the Twitter had explained it as an “inadvertent error” under its copyright policies. “This decision was reversed immediately and the account is fully functional,” a spokesperson of the micro-blogging site had said. There was also summons by the Government of India amid a row over messaging app WhatsApp’s updates with its privacy policy.
In their explanation to the parliamentary panel, both Twitter and Facebook said they have strong rules regarding content and would remove content when necessary to ensure it does not incite violence. It recalled how the social media giant had blocked the account of then US President Donald Trump after the unprecedented violence at the Capitol in Washington DC last year during the Presidential polls.
Twitter blocked the account of former Union Minister and Lok Sabha member from Uttara Kannada Anant Kumar Hegde’s twitter account claiming that the BJP’s leader tweets “violated Twitter norms”. To which Hegde said the action by Twitter was over his tweets that “reveal explicitly the modus operandi and hidden agenda of Tablighi Jamaat movement within India and around the world.”
Hegde said he was “least bothered about the Twitter account that has now been blocked” and that he “would never delete his tweet and stands firm on the statement.” He alleged that the action by Twitter was motivated and thus lodged a complaint with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah about an opinion poll for a referendum on Khalistan, a separate Punjab, being promoted as an advertisement on Twitter.
Ranaut’s Twitter account was permanently suspended after a controversial tweet linked to the violence in West Bengal.
Another celeb Payal Rohatgi too had faced a ban from Twitter because of her controversial and hateful posts last year after a complaint was lodged by a Congress worker against Payal for posting an objectionable video on Indian’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his family on Facebook and Twitter.
Singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya’s Twitter account too got suspended because of his offensive remarks against JNU student-activist Shehla Rashid.
Last month, twitter and other social media platforms were forced to remove about 100 posts and URLs after the Government asked them to do so. The contents were critical of the handling of the current medical crisis or spreading fake news around the pandemic.
Twitter said it notified the impacted account holders of its action taken in response to a legal request from the Indian Government.