Won't Block Activists, Journalists and Politicians in India: Twitter

NEW DELHI: Microblogging site- Twitter aid in a blog post that it won't block the accounts of politicians, journalists and activists in India.

It is to be mentioned that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had requested to block certain profiles on national interests.

Explaining its stand on the blocking orders for certain handles from the Indian government, micro-blogging platformon Wednesday said it had now "withheld a portion of the accounts"

The blog from Twitter states, "We believe transparency is the foundation to promoting healthy public conversation on Twitter and to earn trust. It is critical that people understand our approach to content moderation and how we engage with governments around the world, and that we are transparent about the consequences and the results of this work. Our Transparency Report and Lumen continue to be the places to go to observe trends in the requests governments make of us, and to assess how we operate globally."

"The values that underpin the Open Internet and free expression are increasingly under threat around the world. Following the reports of violence in New Delhi in recent weeks, we wanted to share a granular update on our proactive efforts to enforce our rules and defend our principles in India. Twitter exists to empower voices to be heard, and we continue to make improvements to our service so that everyone — no matter their views or perspective — feels safe participating in the public conversation, " it further added.

The blog post said that over the course of the last 10 days, "Twitter has been served with several separate blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act". Two of these were "emergency blocking orders that we temporarily complied with", though Twitter decided to restore the said accounts "in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law".

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