Indian IT minister says Twitter locked his account for an hour

INDIA'S information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday (25) accused microblogging site Twitter of denying him access to his account for almost an hour on grounds of alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States. His account was reportedly unlocked an hour later. He criticised Twitter saying it violated the country’s IT rules.

Prasad later shared a screenshot on Twitter in which the social media giant was seen informing him that his account has been locked following a complaint Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice for content posted on his account. In another screenshot which he shared in the same tweet, it was seen that Twitter unlocked his account.

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Prasad slammed the move saying Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 whereby they failed to give him a prior notice before stopping his access to his own account. The incident happened at a time when the Indian government and Twitter have clashes over India’s new IT rules.

The government has accused Twitter of deliberately defying and failing to comply with new IT rules, which has led to the latter losing its intermediary status in India and becoming liable for users posting any content which is unlawful.

'My statements ruffled Twitter's feathers'

The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader also said that the incident showed that “his statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of his interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers.”

Twitter, in another message after giving Prasad his access back, warned that his account would be locked again and potentially suspended if any additional notices were received against it, the Indian Express reported.

“In order to avoid this, do not post additional materials in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorised to post,” it added.

Prasad said it was apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to follow 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.”

The minister said he did not commit any copyright violation, adding that in the past several years, no television channel or any anchor brought any complaints about copyright infringements in connection to news clips of his interviews shared on social media.

He also said that Twitter's actions “indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be, but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not tow the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform".