Twitter, along with the Government of India, had temporarily suspended the accounts of those who have been tweeting in favour of the violent Republic Day protests that took a tangent from what started off as a peaceful farmers’ protest.
Around 250 accounts were withheld for tweeting, or retweeting, with the #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide hashtag, and making “fake, intimidatory and provocative tweets” in connection with the ongoing ‘farmers’ protest. But the social media giant began unlocking some of them later.
Some of the twitter handles that were withheld were: anti-Hindu and anti-national magazine The Caravan, founder of Tribal Army Hansraj Meena, Rahul Gandhi’s fan lady Sanjukta Basu, CPI (M) Polit Bureau member Mohammad Salim, etc.
This suspension was followed by a blanked out screen that said: “Your account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand”. A Twitter spokesperson had told IndiaTV that if it receives a “properly scoped request” from an authorised entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.”
“Transparency is vital to protecting freedom of expression, so we have a notice policy for withheld content. Upon receipt of requests to withhold content, we will promptly notify the affected account holders (unless we are prohibited from doing so eg if we receive a court order under seal),” the spokesperson added. However, Twitter did not provide details of the accounts/tweets that were blocked.
“Such withholdings will be limited to the specific jurisdiction that has issued the valid legal demand or where the content has been found to violate local law(s),” Twitter said in its statement.
However, these accounts were restored within hours of facing the action.
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