India on Wednesday reprimanded Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down certain content and warned the social media platform...
India on Wednesday reprimanded Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down certain content and warned the social media platform that it “must respect” local laws “irrespective of Twitter’s own rules and guidelines”.
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, via a statement on rival platform Koo, said that its secretary had on a call with some of Twitter’s top executives expressed “strong displeasure” with Twitter’s actions. The same release was later posted on Twitter.
“Twitter is free to formulate its own rules and guidelines,” the government said. “But Indian laws which are enacted by the Parliament of India must be followed irrespective of Twitter’s own rules and guidelines.”
The microblogging website found itself at the centre of a political firestorm after Twitter refused to fully comply with Narendra Modi’s government order to remove more than 1,100 accounts and posts that are allegedly spreading misinformation about the farmer protests against the new agricultural laws. Twitter said these demands of the government were inconsistent with the Indian law.
It refused to outright ban the handles, but imposed restrictions on some of them within India. Notably, none of the suspended accounts belonged to journalists, news organisations, activists and politicians, as doing so “would violate their fundamental right to free expression...
