There the social media giant was told that it was "welcome to do
business in India", but it had to follow the laws of the country
"irrespective of Twitter's own rules and guidelines".To get more
twitter news, you can visit shine news official website.
The
backdrop of the meeting was the mounting tension between Narendra
Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and Twitter over tweets
and accounts linked to the continuing farmers' protests against a series
of agriculture reform laws.
The largely peaceful agitation had
been jolted by violence involving a group of protesters on 26 January,
which left one person dead and hundreds of policemen injured. The
government had asked Twitter to remove tweets that had used an
incendiary hashtag, and accounts allegedly used by Sikh separatist
groups and "backed by Pakistan".
Twitter had first blocked some
250 accounts in response to a legal notice by the government, citing
objections based on public order. These included accounts of an
investigative news magazine, and activists and outfits associated with
supporting the months-long protests on the outskirts of Delhi. Then, six
hours later, Twitter restored the accounts, citing "insufficient
justification" for continuing the suspension.Mr Modi's government was
not pleased. In a terse statement, it ordered Twitter to block the
accounts again, and threatened people working for the company in India
with legal action - up to seven years in prison - if they refused to do
so. The tweets, insisted the government, were part of a "motivated
campaign to abuse, inflame and create tension in society on
unsubstantiated grounds".
On Wednesday, Twitter responded. In a
blog, the firm said it had suspended more than 500 accounts - some
permanently - that were engaged in "platform manipulation and spam",
taken action on "hundreds of accounts" that violated its rules on
incitement and violence, and prevented certain terms that violated its
rules from trending. In line with its rules, some accounts had been
blocked only in India.
But it also said it would not block
accounts belonging to media companies, journalists, activists and
politicians because that would "violate their fundamental right to free
expression under the Indian law".
The face-off continues. India's
information technology minister has now joined in, telling the
parliament on Thursday that "action" would be taken against social media
platforms if they were "misused to spread fake news and violence"."You
have millions of followers in India, you are free to do business and
make money, but you will have to follow the Indian constitution," Ravi
Shankar Prasad, said, naming a number of sites, including Facebook and
Twitter.
Many say it is not clear whether the government is
trying to strong-arm Twitter to silence protesters or moving towards
blocking it from India.
"I think we need to move beyond the
rhetoric and move to action if the government really believes that
Twitter has violated the law. What is the point of issuing statements,
having meetings, when you think they are breaking the law? What is
stopping the government from taking action?" says Nikhil Pahwa, a
digital rights activist and editor of MediaNama, a technology policy
website.
The Wall