Twitter Censored Tweets Critical Of India’s Handling Of Pandemic

[Anta Assamey]

Social networking platforms have come to the rescue of citizens of India in handling the Corona crisis. The second wave of Corona has clearly hinted at poor handling of the health crisis by the government. A lot of people made the platform as a base to post requests on beds, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, plasma donation, and other emergency-related queries. However, the latest reports reveal that Twitter has taken down dozens of tweets in India, some of which were critical of New Delhi’s handling of the coronavirus.

Twitter had to take this sudden decision in order to comply with an emergency order from the Indian government. The government order mentioned the links to almost over 50 tweets from different users of the platform which include the people’s representatives. Twitter disclosed the same on the Lumen database.

This is not the first time that the government of India directed Twitter to censor posts on the platform.

Talking about the same, a spokesperson from Twitter responded to the Medianama website. The spokesperson said, “When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitter’s 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 they’re aware that we’ve 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.”

[Pitta]