Since the events of January 26, the government of India has been pressurising Twitter to take action against certain accounts and be more ‘vigilant’. Twitter has posted a blog answering a lot of questions around the whole issue. The social media platform said that it has taken action against “hundreds of accounts that violated the Twitter Rules, particularly inciting violence, abuse, wishes of harm, and threats that could trigger the risk of offline harm”. Twitter said that it had also suspended more than 500 accounts that were engaging in clear examples of platform manipulation and spam.”
However, there are certain legal requests made by the government of India that weren’t fine with Twitter. Amongst them one was to block accounts of journalists, politicians and certain activists. Twitter has put the ball in government’s court and turned the tables by saying that it does 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.”
Twitter further said that by blocking accounts of journalists, politicians and activists, it “would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law.”
“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,” the social media platform noted in its blog post.Twitter vs govt of India: Why journalists, activists politician won’t be blocked