Among some of the prominent acounts withheld by Twitter were those belonging to Caravan India, Kisan Ekta Morcha, CPM leader Mohammad Salim and AAP MLAs.
Government sources on Monday said Twitter blocked some 250 accounts tweeting with the #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide hashtag, and making “fake, intimidatory and provocative tweets”, adding that the request had come from the Home Ministry and law enforcement agencies, NDTV reported.
As per sources, the request was made with a view to preventing “escalation of law and order (situation) in view of the ongoing farmer agitation.
Among some of the prominent acounts withheld by Twitter were those belonging to Caravan India, Kisan Ekta Morcha, CPM leader Mohammad Salim and AAP MLAs.
“… @salimdotcomrade’s account has been suspended by @Twitter. Multiple popular Twitter accounts, which were championing the cause of the farmers have been withheld by Twitter citing some “legal” request. We condemn this & demand the suspensions to be removed immediately,” the CPM tweeted.
On all these blocked acounts, a ticker “Acount Withheld” can be read and tweets are not visible. Below that it says: “User’s account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand”.
According to Twitter’s policy, content (and accounts) might be withheld “…if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity”.
“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 ‘Help’ section.
This comes shortly after multiple police cases were filed against journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, as well as several others, for posts and comments on this matter.
“…They posted fake, misleading and wrong information regarding unfortunate death of the tractor driver in accident to instigate violence amongst protestors,” Delhi police had said on Saturday.
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