The recent Farmers’ Protest has turned into a mass movement and many renowned artists, players, political leaders, celebrities have tweeted their opinion regarding the same. Twitter is a platform which allows people to share their feelings and more, but this recent case and all the different sorts of posts have led to a chaos on the platform. A few fake and malicious posts are taking over the app and provoking the sentiments of public. Twitter banned a few account to get hold of the situation but it caused even a bigger mayhem. Twitter put out a statement defending its actions of restoring some of the accounts it had withheld earlier this month, after being served with blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
On February 1, several Twitter accounts tweeting and reporting on the ongoing farmers’ protests in India were withheld from viewing. These included accounts of news magazine The Caravan, farmers’ acitivist group Kisan Ekta Morcha, and other notable personalities like Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Jarnail Singh, actor Sushant Singh, activist Sanjukta Basu, activist Hansraj Meena and Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati. In accordance to the matter to suppress the outrage twitter restored the withheld accounts. The website told government officials that the ban on these accounts were reversed to preserve free speech on the platform. Few days later, the Centre issued a notice to Twitter India, warning it with penal action for its failure to comply with its January 31 order to block accounts that used the hashtag #ModiPlanningFarmersGenocide. The blocking order had also mentioned some accounts that did not use the hashtag, such as The Caravan.
The company expressed concerns over the safety of its employees, and stated that it had requested a formal dialogue with the Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology. hese accounts are therefore available for viewers outside the country. It also mentioned that the requests by the government to withhold accounts of news media, journalists, activists and politicians are not consistent with Indian law, and that such a request could violate their freedom of expression.
This is one of the first instances of the company taking a formal stand on its platform’s use for dissemination of information on protests in India. “We will continue to advocate for the right of free expression on behalf of the people we serve. We are exploring options under Indian law — both for Twitter and for the accounts that have been impacted,” the statement added.
