Twitter has restricted 50 tweets in India related to a viral video of an elderly Muslim man being assaulted in the town of Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. This action comes after cops sent a notice to summon Twitter India’s chief last week to give a statement.
The Ghaziabad police force had filed a complaint against Twitter, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, and online media entity The Wire, for allegedly creating communal tension through tweets. Those tweets had a video of an elderly Muslim man being assaulted in the city.
In a statement, Twitter said that it has complied with a legal request and referred to its content restriction policy:
As explained in ourCountry Withheld Policy, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in response to a valid legal demand or when the content has been found to violate local law(s). The withholdings are limited to the specific jurisdiction/country where the content is determined to be illegal. We notify the account holder directly so they’re aware that we’ve received a legal order pertaining to the account by sending a message to the email address associated with the account(s), if available. The legal requests that we receive are detailed in the bianualTwitter Transparency Report, and requests to withhold content are published onLumen.
India’s IT Minister, RS Prasad, criticized Twitter last for failing to comply with India’s new social media policing rules on time and not taking any action on tweets related to the UP incident.
Twitter has been in a constant battle with the government for a while, especially when it comes to restricting tweets and applying misinformation labels.