Telangana asks Twitter to act against those who promoted ‘data theft’ hashtag

The Telangana government has reported fake and anonymous accounts that reportedly promoted the hashtag — #TSGovtStealsData — on Monday to Twitter. It has asked the social media site to cancel the ‘tick mark’ assigned to a few verified accounts.

It made a formal complaint with the social media company, alleging that these ‘paid’ accounts had tweeted and shared posts with the hashtag after the Telangana police filed a data theft case against IT Grids, an IT company. “We found that these tweets and re-tweets came from unlikely places, raising eyebrows. Some of the orchestrated tweets were found even on some verified accounts,” Konatham Dileep, digital media director of the Telangana government told BusinessLine.