Twitter India’s managing director, Manish Maheshwari, was called last week to appear at the Ghaziabad police station for not taking down a tweet that was “provoking communal unrest”. The tweet contained a video of an elderly, Muslim man being assaulted in Ghaziabad. Now, in response to the notice and to comply with India’s strict moderation policy, Twitter has blocked all tweets containing the video in India.
Twitter tries a compromise
Across the rest of the tweeting world (except maybe Nigeria) the tweets, 50 of them, remain visible. In short they’ve been geo-blocked, not completely blocked and not removed.
Twitter released a statement (cited by The Next Web) explaining its decision:
“As explained in our Country 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 biannual Twitter Transparency Report, and requests to withhold content are published.”
To read more on the article titled “Twitter blocks tweets “provoking communal unrest” in India” click here.
