Govt tells Twitter leadership to abide by its lawful orders

The government has conveyed its displeasure to the Twitter leadership on the issue of non-suspension of 257 accounts. In a virtual meeting, the government said that the manner in which Twitter officially allows fake, unverified, anonymous, and automated bot accounts to be operated on its platform, raises doubts about its commitment to transparency and healthy conversation on this platform.

At the request of Twitter, Secretary Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Ajay Prakash Sawhney held a virtual interaction with Monique Meche, Vice President Global Public Policy, and Jim Baker Deputy General Counsel and Vice President Legal yesterday.

In a statement, the ministry said that lawfully passed orders are binding on any business entity and they must be obeyed immediately. It also said that if the government order is executed days later it becomes meaningless.

Secretary, Electronics and IT Ajay Prakash Sawhney expressed his deep disappointment to Twitter leadership about the manner in which Twitter has unwillingly, grudgingly, and with great delay complied with the substantial parts of the order. He took this opportunity to remind Twitter that in India, its Constitution and laws are supreme and it is expected that responsible entities not only reaffirm but remain committed to compliance to the law of land.

The Secretary took up the issue of using a hashtag on ‘farmer genocide’ with Twitter executives and expressed strong displeasure on the way Twitter acted after an emergency order was issued to remove this hashtag and content related to that.

He said that spreading misinformation using an incendiary and baseless hashtag referring to  ‘farmer genocide’ at a time when such irresponsible content can provoke and inflame the situation is neither journalistic freedom nor freedom of expression as envisaged under Article 19 of the Constitution of India. He said, despite the attention of Twitter being drawn to such content by the Government through a lawful process, the platform allowed the content with this hashtag to continue, which was extremely unfortunate.

In a blog post titled 'Updates on our response to blocking orders from the Indian Government', the platform listed down the action it has taken based on its own rules and legal requests from the Indian government.

Beginning on 26 January 2021, Twitter's global team provided 24/7 coverage and took enforcement action judiciously and impartially on content, Trends, Tweets, and accounts that were in violation of the Twitter Rules — our global policy framework that governs every Tweet on the service.

The platform took action on hundreds of accounts that violated the Twitter Rules, particularly inciting violence, abuse, wishes of harm, and threats that could trigger the risk of offline harm. It also prevented certain terms that violated our Rules from appearing in the Trends section. Further, it suspended more than 500 accounts that were engaging in clear examples of platform manipulation and spam. It also tackled misinformation based on the highest potential for real-world harm and prioritized labeling of Tweets that were in violation of our synthetic and manipulated media policy.

Separate to its enforcement under the Twitter Rules, 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. Out of these, two were emergency blocking orders that we temporarily complied with but subsequently restored access to the content in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law. After we communicated this to MeitY, we were served with a non-compliance notice.

The platform complied with the government's orders by taking steps to reduce the visibility of the hashtags containing harmful content, which included prohibiting them from trending on Twitter and appearing as recommended search terms. It also took a range of enforcement actions — including permanent suspension in certain cases — against more than 500 accounts escalated across all MeitY orders for clear violations of Twitter’s Rules.

It has also withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders under our Country Withheld Content policy within India only. These accounts continue to be available outside of India.

"Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law, and, in keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians. To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. We informed MeitY of our enforcement actions today, February 10, 2021. We will continue to maintain a dialogue with the Indian government and respectfully engage with them," the platform said.

Twitter said that it will continue to advocate for the right of free expression on behalf of the people. "We are exploring options under Indian law — both for Twitter and for the accounts that have been impacted. We remain committed to safeguarding the health of the conversation occurring on Twitter, and strongly believe that the Tweets should flow."