Following the permanent ban of Donald Trump from its microblogging platform, Twitter took down all of his tweets and permanently shut down his account. Twitter then published an elaborate blogpost, explaining as to why they took it down.
In the blog post, they had mentioned that this had been done in the wake of the recent uprising at the Capitol following the election of Joe Biden as the POTUS. They had said, “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
They went on to say that the posts were in direct conflict with their public interest framework, which is used to monitor and keep a check and balance on the accounts of world leaders.
They went on to say that this action had been done to eliminate the risk of incitement of violence from the supporters of Donald Trump and to maintain communal harmony.
However, it is noteworthy to mention that Twitter took no action when anarchy took over the streets of America during the Black Lives Matter protest which was fanned by inciting speeches of several prominent Twitter handles. Now Vice President Kamala Harris had stated that those protesting will not and should not ‘let up’ the protests.
Mahathir Mohamad, when he was the Malaysian Prime Minsiter in October 2020 put out a series of vitriolic tweets saying “Muslims have the right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
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This tweet of the Muslim Prime Minister of Malaysia had triggered widespread outrage globally following which Mahathir deleted the tweet. But the tweet given below still exists.
13. Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years.https://t.co/ysZeXDrQ09
— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 29, 2020
Despite the outrage and the backlash received by Mahathir Mohamad globally, Twitter did not suspend his account even for namesake.
Coming to India, it was the time when the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 had been passed and the Shaheenbagh episode had unfolded. Donald Trump, then US President touched down in New Delhi for the Namaste Trump event during which urban naxals and Jihadis planned and executed riots in the streets of north-east Delhi. The riots were incited by the likes of Umar Khalid, Harsh Mander, Swara Bhasker, writers from The Wire – Sharjeel Imam and Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Aam Aadmi Party’s Tahir Hussain and several other rabid Islamists.
Umar Khalid, a student from Jawaharlal Nehru University who has been accused of orchestrating the riots is now in prison along with Tahir Hussain and Khalid Saifi. Sharjeel Imam who called for ‘cutting off’ Assam and the north-east from the rest of India is also in judicial custody.
Both of their Twitter accounts is fully operational.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Twitter itself was elemental in promoting these riots in both India and the USA.
Twitter is known for silencing the non-left voices in India too. It had suspended and even cancelled handles without any notice or explanation. Scientist and Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University Dr. Anand Ranganathan and True Indology who have been countering the left through facts had their accounts suspended frequently by Twitter.
True Indology, a social media account that shares information on Indian history was suspended without any explanation by Twitter arbitrarily, violating its own policies, following an argument with D Roopa IPS over the issue of historical references to bursting crackers for Deebavali.
Anand Ranganathan, a scientist, columnist and professor at Jawaharlal National University, was blocked by Twitter on in August 2020 citing ‘hateful conduct’ for his tweet. He had posted an English translation of a Quranic Verse in the light of Bengaluru violence that was unleashed by members of the Popular Front of India (PFI) and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), both of them being extremely radical Islamist organizations. Recently, the National Investigation Agency arrested 17 members belonging to the PFI and SDPI. But the Twitter accounts of PFI and SDPI have not been suspended.
That Twitter’s bias through its amplification of the left and suppressing of the non-left both in India and abroad is well known, what has disgusted people across the world is its arbitrariness and double-standards that allows it to peddle the narrative it wants to peddle.
Hence, it is high time that democracies across the world take action to put in place adequate frameworks to bring these tech giants sitting in Silicon Valley to books and ensure that there exists no different standards on free speech, for free speech is not a sole propriety of one group.
