Twitter gets in govt’s crosshairs on content

Tensions escalated between Twitter and the government on Wednesday with the latter terming a Twitter blog post on free speech published earlier in the morning as “unusual”.

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) expressed its discomfort with the Twitter blog post in a statement posted on Twitter as well as the Koo app, a local version of Twitter, which has become the new favourite of several ministers and government departments.

In the blog post, Twitter released a detailed statement on the content removal requests by the government, stating that it has taken action against hundreds of accounts after MeitY issued a non-compliance notice threatening penal action. However, it asserted, none of the action was taken on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists and politicians.