Majority of tweets taken down contained photos, videos, highlighting the acute shortage of oxygen, bed, and criticized the government for its inept handling of the pandemic.
Microblogging site Twitter on Sunday deleted over 50 posts that were flagged by the Modi government for ‘disinformation’. A major chunk of the tweets taken down from public view in India contained photos, videos, highlighting the acute shortage of oxygen, bed, and criticized the government for its inept handling of the pandemic. India recorded 3,49,691 cases and 2767 deaths in the last 24 hours.
This was first reported by Medianama, a technology news website. As per the details shared by Twitter on the Lumen database, a project by Harvard Universityâs Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, the Central government had asked Twitter to block 32 tweets on 22 April, and 21 tweets on 23 April.
“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitterâs Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only. In all cases, we notify the account holder directly so theyâre aware that weâve received a legal order pertaining to the account. We notify the user(s) by sending a message to the email address associated with the account(s), if available. Read more about our Legal request FAQs. The legal requests that we receive are detailed in the biannual Twitter Transparency Report, and requests to withhold content are published on Lumen.” said a Twitter Spokesperson to Medianama.
Also Read: âPeople Shouldnât Fall Prey To Misinformationâ: PM Modi On Mann Ki Baat
Some of the verified accounts whose tweets have been removed include, Congress Spokesperson Pawan Khera, Member of Parliament Revanth Reddy, a minister from West Bengal Moloy Ghatak, ABP News editor Pankaj Jha, Actor Vineet Kumar Singh, filmmaker Avinash Das, and filmmaker and former journalist Vinod Kapri.
Hashtags like #ModiMadeDisaster and comparison to Kumbh Mela and Tablighi Jamaat was noticed in the now-deleted tweets. According to The Wire, some of the tweets that were reported by the government were indeed using a misleading photo to describe the impact on the health infrastructure because of the second wave.
This is not the first time that the Centre has asked Twitter to take down certain tweets/accounts. In February, it asked the microblogging site to remove over 1100 accounts that were related to the ongoing farmers’ protest and suspected to be linked to ‘Khalistan Sympathisers’
The provision of the Information Technology Act 2000 that was used to remove the tweets today is still unclear.
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