A number of Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Kisan Ekta Morcha and the Caravan, are now blocked in India, apparently, after the Indian government sent a legal notice to Twitter.
The accounts that have been blocked by Twitter in India include Kisan Ekta Morcha, The Caravan India, Manik Goyal, Tractor2twitr and jatt_junction.
It seems Twitter has received a legal notice to block several Twitter accounts belonging to farmers’ organisations, activists and media groups that were tweeting on framers protests against the farm bill.
Their Facebook accounts are still active. Vinod Jose, editor-in-chief of The Caravan said they were not aware of any communication from Twitter and will be writing to the social media platform for further clarity.
On Saturday, the police had also arrested a contributor to the Caravan magazine while he was covering the clashes at Singhu border. Mandeep Punia was accused of misbehaving with a station house officer.
The account of Shashi Shekhar Vempati, CEO of Prasar Bharati, India’s largest public broadcasting service, has also been also withheld.
‘BOOM’ reached out to Twitter India who in a statement to BOOM said it had received a request from an ‘authorised entity.’
“Many countries have laws that may apply to Tweets and/or Twitter account content. In our continuing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.”
These legal requests can be filed by a law enforcement agent, government official or a third party, who would like to have potentially illegal content or accounts removed from Twitter.
Commenting on the same, Twitter India said, “Many countries have laws that may apply to Tweets and/or Twitter account content. In our continuing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time. Transparency is vital to protecting freedom of expression, so we have a notice policy for withheld content. Upon receipt of requests to withhold content, we will promptly notify the affected account holders (unless we are prohibited from doing, so e.g. if we receive a court order under seal).”
