Keypoints:
- Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Twitter denied access to him for an hour due to alleged “violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA”.
- He said that Twitter’s actions indicate that they are not harbinger of free speech that they claim to be, but they are interested only in running their own agenda.
On Friday, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that Twitter had denied access to his account for almost an hour. It had happened due to alleged “violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA”. He said that he was allowed access to his account later.
With the screenshot of his account being locked, the Union Minister tweeted, “Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account.”
Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account. pic.twitter.com/WspPmor9Su
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) June 25, 2021
He claimed that his recent statements where he had called out the “high handedness” and “arbitrary actions” of Twitter have clearly “ruffled the feathers” of the company.
“Further, it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual’s account which does not suit their agenda,” he said. He said that Twitter’s harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in their own agenda. He also said that Twitter is warning people that if you do not tow the line it draws,it will arbitrarily remove you from the platform.
He added, “No matter what any platform does, they will have to abide by the new IT rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that.”
For the last few weeks, the Central government and twitter have been at odds with each other because of various statements made by the US based giant over the freedom of speech in India. The microblogging platform has accused the government of “dangerous overreach” and has claimed that it was forced to “withhold” portions of “legitimate free speech”.
The reaction of the government was strong to those allegations, charging the company with deliberately subverting the law of the land and trying to “dictate” its terms even while using “opaque policies” to “arbitrarily” suspend user accounts and delete tweets.
