Asked to block multiple accounts during farmers' protests, Twitter tells Karnataka HC

Twitter Inc on Monday told the High Court of Karnataka that during farmers’ protest in 2021 it was asked to block certain accounts. Senior advocate Aravind S Datar, appearing for Twitter in the petition questioning the blocking orders under section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, said that the blocking orders will have to be tweet specific and cannot be stretched to a complete blocking of the accounts.

The counsel said that the provisions of the Act and the rules do not contemplate a wholesale blocking of accounts. Quoting the example of the blocking orders issued by the Union government during the farmers’ protest, the counsel said that at relevant point of time newspapers and TV channels were reporting the protest. “Every other platform (newspaper and channels) was running the businesses. Why ask only Twitter to block the accounts? It is not a case of habitual/repeat offender,” the counsel said, adding that most of the accounts, ordered to be blocked, had criticised the Union government and within the purview of freedom of expression under Article 19 (1) (a) of the constitution.

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It was further argued that since the blocking orders stated that it was confidential, Twitter could not inform the account holder/user about it. The procedure adopted by the Centre not only affects the business, but also the account holder, the counsel said.

The bench presided over by Justice Krishna S Dixit sought to know how such issues are dealt with in other jurisdictions such as American law. The hearing has been adjourned to October 17.

In its petition, Twitter challenged a series of blocking orders issued by the Union government from February 2, 2021 till February 28, 2022. The orders issued by the ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had directed Twitter to block access by the public for certain information, which include suspension of multiple accounts on Twitter.

Twitter claimed that on February 2, 2021, the MeitY had issued orders to block 256 URLs and one hashtag. Subsequently, till February 28, 2022, a total of 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets were ordered to be blocked. Of the total URLs ordered to be blocked, which Twitter claimed to have complied with under protest, the petition has preferred to challenge the blocking orders pertaining to only 39 URLs.