Key Points:
- On Thursday, the members of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology raised the Twitter issue of Amit Shah.
- The account of the Union home minister Amit Shah in November, 2020 as well as the misrepresentation of the Indian map by the micro-blogging site was the topic to discuss on.
- The BJP members were also seen grilling the Twitter representatives on the the microblogging site’s decision to suspend Shah’s account for half an hour in November last year.
- Twitter had then already clarified that Amit Shah’s account was temporarily locked due to an ‘Inadvertent Error’ and the decision was immediately reversed. It also explained the action was taken as per their policy after algorithms highlighted a copyright issue.
On Thursday, the members of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology raised the Twitter issue of Amit Shah. The account of the Union home minister Amit Shah in 2020 as well as the misrepresentation of the Indian map by the micro-blogging site.
Representatives of Twitter, Facebook and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), were all separately interacted with by the committee. The topic of interaction was on the issue of safeguarding citizens’ rights, preventing misuse of social news media platforms and women security in the digital space.
While all this, some of the BJP members raised the issue of the platform locking the account of Shah for a short period late last year. Some BJP members questioned the fact-checking mechanism at Twitter and wondered how the account of the country’s home minister was locked. The BJP members were also seen grilling the Twitter representatives on the the microblogging site’s decision to suspend Shah’s account for half an hour in November last year.
Twitter had then already clarified that Amit Shah’s account was temporarily locked due to an ‘Inadvertent Error’ and the decision was immediately reversed. It also explained the action was taken as per their policy after algorithms highlighted a copyright issue.
The issue of banning accounts for hate speech, like in the case of former US President Donald Trump, was also discussed. While some MPs welcomed the move, others called it a random decision saying that some accounts in India have not been banned despite similar violations. Both Twitter and Facebook said they have strong rules regarding content and would remove content when necessary to ensure it does not incite violence.
