The government ordered Twitter to ban 1,178 accounts immediately which are responsible for spreading misinformation on the farmer’s protest and sharing provoking content. The government is really concerned about the manipulation and misleading of people who are against the bill and the government believes that this is going to be the right action to stop this. Twitter mentioned that it had not taken any action on accounts of media, journalists, activists, and politicians as it will violate the right to freedom of expression under Indian law.
Why Government is Pushing to Ban 1,178 Twitter Accounts?
The government cleared all the doubts that those 1,178 Twitter accounts which the government is asking to block right away, does belong to Pakistani and Khalistani users and they are the only ones who are misleading farmers over the internet and even provoking people who are in support from different parts of the world.
Twitter mentioned in a blog post that it had withheld a portion of accounts that have been verified in the blocking order under their Country Withheld Concept Policy, that is, within India only. Meaning these blocked accounts will continue in other countries rather than in India.
Twitter also said that it does not believe that the actions it had been directed to take will remain consistent with the Indian law and it had not taken any necessary action on those accounts that consists of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians in order to keep its principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression. And doing so, and fully agreeing with the government will violate their fundamental rights under Indian law.
What Twitter Has to Say ?
The microblogging site said its job is to empower hidden voices who want to share their thoughts and opinions and want to be heard to everyone, no matter what their views or perspectives are, but they should feel safe and free to make their voice reach to million ears with the medium and power of social networking.
Twitter gave the assurance that it will regularly monitor all the tweets related to the farmer bill issue and is really committed to safeguarding the health of the conversation. It also insisted that the flow of tweets shall not be stopped because absolute stoppage would mean a violation of freedom of speech.
In order to defend its moves, Twitter mentioned that it took some necessary steps to reduce the visibility of hashtags containing harmful contents, that will stop such contents to appear on the trending page of Twitter and appearing as recommended search items.
It also said that necessary actions were taken against more than 500 Twitter accounts and they have been permanently suspended as the government ordered to do so.