Farm stir: Twitter starts blocking accounts flagged by govt, over 700 handles deactivated

Days after the government issued notice to Twitter ordering it to remove over 1,400 accounts related farmers' protests, Twitter officials will meet the Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) today to discuss the issue.

The meeting comes after IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad refused to meet Twitter India officials.

Twitter earlier said it has sought a formal dialogue with the IT Minister., over

Sources said that Twitter has started acting on the government notice and has blocked around 700 accounts.

Also read — Twitter seeks dialogue with IT Minister after order to block accounts

Twitter 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. Withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders, the US-based microblogging platform said.

The Centre is also unhappy with Twitter for delaying in blocking accounts flagged by the government.

The government and Twitter are at loggerheads after the government asked Twitter to remove over 1,400 accounts for spreading misinformation and provocative content on farmers agitation for the past 10 days. According to the government, these accounts were handled by Kalistan and pro-Pakisthan handlers and used to provoke protesting farmers.

Though initially, Twitter blocked around 250 accounts, it later restored those accounts. However, objecting to the unilateral restoration, the Ministry Electronics and Information Technology issued notice to Twitter and warned to take penal action if it failed to block "provocative” Twitter hashtags such as "#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide" and dozens of accounts.