Indian government censors COVID-19 Twitter posts
The removal of tweets about COVID-19 on the order of the Indian government prompted lawmakers and human rights activists to accuse the government of censorship and further putting peoples' health at risk. The discovery that the government had made an emergency order to censor tweets was revealed on Lumen, which publishes details of legal takedown notices social media companies and others receive from governments and private entities across the world. The order was f irst reve aled by MediaNama. Local reports indicated the banned material includes a tweet from Pawan Khera, a spokesman for India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), who accused Modi of holding political rallies while the virus raged and failing to acknowledge that they likely contributed directly to the spread of COVID-19. Others on the list included posts by INC parliamentarian Revanth Reddy, West Bengal state minister Moloy Ghatak, and filmmakers Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das. A number of tweets castigated Modi for failing to fix India's healthcare system, which has run out of beds, oxygen and medicines, leading to a humanitarian disaster. A Twitter spokesperson told DW , 'When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitter's Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.' A few days later , Facebook was discovered to have been t emporarily hid ing posts calling for the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. System 🤖 Twitter content moderation system Operator: Twitter Developer: Twitter Country: India Sector: Politics; Health Purpose: Moderate content Technology: Content moderation system Issue: Human/civil rights; Transparency
- Date it happened
- 2021-04-01
- Organisation involved
- xAI
- Product, system or model
- Facebook News Feed
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