Twitter withholds 50 tweets related to alleged assault of man in Ghaziabad

Twitter has withheld 50 tweets related to a communally sensitive video clip of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad Uttar Pradesh on the microblogging platform according to sourcesAccording to information on the Lumen database Twitter received a legal request from the Indian government on June 17 for actioning 50 tweetsThese tweets have been withheld and the content could not be independently verifiedUpon clicking on the blocked URLs listed on Lumen database a message saying the tweet has been ldquowithheld in India in response to a legal demandrdquo is displayedAccording to sources these tweets contained content related to the said video clipWhen contacted a Twitter spokesperson said ldquoAs 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 lawsrdquoThe spokesperson noted that the withholdings are limited to the specific jurisdictioncountry where the content is determined to be illegalThe account holder is notified directly by sending a message to the email address associated with the accounts if available so that the user is aware that Twitter has received a legal order pertaining to the accountldquoThe legal requests that we receive are detailed in the biannual Twitter Transparency Report and requests to withhold content are published on Lumenrdquo the spokesperson addedRequests received by Twitter for withholding content are published on Lumen database an independent research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online contentThe Ghaziabad police have booked Twitter and six people for circulating a video that claimed to have the elderly Muslim man saying he was allegedly thrashed and asked to chant Jai Shri Ram Police say this was done to create communal unrestThe Ghaziabad police have sent a notice to Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari asking him to join a probe in connection with the caseTwitter has drawn flak for failure to fully comply with the new IT rules which mandates among other requirements the appointment of three key personnel chief compliance officer nodal officer and grievance officer by social media platforms with over 50 lakh users All the three personnel have to be resident in IndiaWhile the rules came into effect on May 26 Twitter is yet to adhere to the social media guidelines despite repeated reminders from the governmentThe government last week had slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the IT rules which has led to the US giant losing its intermediary status in India and becoming liable for users posting any unlawful contentTwitter and the government have been at loggerheads over multiple instances in the past months including during the farmers protest and later when the microblogging platform tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as manipulated media triggering a sharp rebuke from the CentreTwitter has an estimated 175 crore users in India as per data cited by the government recentlyEarlier this month Twitter had blocked accounts of Punjabi rapper JazzyB Sydneybased hiphop artist LFresh the Lion and two others following demands by the Indian governmentEarlier this year more than 500 accounts were suspended and access to hundreds of others in India blocked after the government ordered the microblogging platform to restrain the spread of misinformation and inflammatory content related to farmers protestsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever