Government questions Twitter’s transparency, asks it to respect Indian laws

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has said that the manner in which Twitter is giving permission to fake, unverified, anonymous, and automated bot accounts to be operated on its platform, raises doubts about its commitment to transparency and healthy conversation on this platform.

The Indian government and Twitter are in a showdown over tweets on the ongoing protest of farmers in India. The government had issued an emergency order and asked Twitter to block 1178 accounts.

The government had alleged that these accounts spread misinformation and use a provocative and baseless hashtag on ‘farmer genocide’.

In response, Twitter suspended about 500 accounts and block some accounts only in India. It refused to block accounts of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians.

“We will continue to advocate for the right of free expression on behalf of the people we serve, and are exploring options under Indian law,” it said.

On Wednesday a virtual meeting held between the Secretary Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with Monique Meche, Vice President Global Public Policy, and Mr. Jim Baker Deputy General Counsel and Vice President Legal from Twitter.

A press release issued after the meeting by the Ministry said, “Secretary took up the issue of using a hashtag on ‘farmer genocide’ with Twitter executives and expressed strong displeasure on the way Twitter acted after an emergency order was issued to remove this hashtag and content related to that.”

The Ministry further said that spreading misinformation by using provocative and baseless hashtags such as a ‘farmer genocide’ which can cause disturbance and create a law and order situation in India is neither journalistic freedom nor freedom of expression.

“Despite the attention of Twitter being drawn to such content by the Government through a lawful process, the platform allowed the content with this hashtag to continue, which was extremely unfortunate,” the release said.