Final month, an interview with Twitter cofounder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, was posted on-line, the place he claimed that the Indian authorities threatened the microblogging platform that it’s going to shut down its places of work in India and perform raids if they didn’t block accounts that have been important of the federal government in the course of the farmers’ protest. On Friday, July 21, the Central authorities accepted sending a discover to Twitter, warning it of ‘important penalties’ after the social media firm failed to dam 167 of the three,750 URLs it had ordered to be taken down.
Based on studies, the federal government said that the choice to dam these URLs was taken below the Data Expertise Act which empowers the federal government to take down any such content material that could be in opposition to nationwide safety.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Data Expertise, advised the Parliament, “The federal government issued discover to Twitter on June 27, 2022, giving them a chance to conform totally, failing which they might have needed to face important penalties as point out within the IT Act, 2000. Subsequent to this discover, Twitter complied with all of the blocking instructions issued below Part 69A of the IT Act, 2000”. Chandrasekhar was responding to a query raised in Rajya Sabha.
Even whereas admitting to sending the discover, the Union minister denied ever threatening Twitter of finishing up licensed raids or shutting down its India places of work. It additionally rejected the concept it ever requested customers’ knowledge from any social media accounts.
Centre accepts sending Twitter a discover
This isn’t the primary time, Chandrasekhar has responded to those allegations. He wrote a protracted tweet after Dorsey’s interview got here to the floor the place he said, “That is an outright lie by @jack – maybe an try to brush out that very doubtful interval of twitters historical past”. Then, headlining the following a part of his tweet as ‘Information and reality’, he added, “@twitter undr Dorsey n his staff have been in repeated n steady violations of India regulation. As a matter of reality they have been in non-compliance with regulation repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was solely June 2022 after they lastly complied”.
The Former IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad reacted to the allegations on the time and mentioned, “On the time, Twitter did not adjust to Indian legal guidelines. It’s clear that every one social media platforms are revered in India however they should abide by the regulation of the land”.
