Police threaten, recent incidents threaten freedom of expression: Twitter

A day after Facebook approached the court to challenge the traceability provision in Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s new IT rules, another US social media giant Twitter called the Delhi Police’s visit to its offices a “bullying tactic” – And said it is concerned for its employees a “potential threat” to the freedom of expression of India and Twitter users. “Right now, we in India are concerned about recent incidents about our employees and the potential threat to freedom of expression of the people we serve. We, along with many people in civil society in India and around the world, are concerned with the enforcement of our global terms of service, as well as the use of bullying tactics by the police in response to the core elements of the new IT regulations. A Twitter spokesperson said, We plan to advocate changes to the elements of these rules that prevent free, open public dialogue. “We will continue our constructive dialogue with the Government of India and believe that it is important to adopt a collaborative approach. Elected officials, industry and civil society have a collective responsibility to protect the public interest, ”the spokesperson said.

The Twitter statement comes five days after the Delhi Police knocked on the company’s Delhi and Gurgaon offices, asking top officials to join the investigation into the complaint by the Congress, in which the BJP leaders had brought the Prime Minister into disrepute. The “toolkit” was tweeted against the conspiracy allegations Minister and the government. The police have also sought information from Twitter as to why it has labeled the tweets raising allegations of “toolkit” against Congress, including BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, as “manipulative media”. The IT ministry had asked Twitter to drop the label as law enforcement agencies were investigating the issue, saying that “this action not only undermines Twitter’s credibility as a neutral and impartial platform … the moderator . However, these tweets still bear the label “manipulation media”. According to Twitter’s policies, The “Manipulated Media” label is added only if the content or tweet has been changed in a way that is different from the facts or in such a way that its context is completely different from the original. The IT ministry had also questioned Twitter’s process of labeling the tweet and asked it to clarify

Who was the fact-checker behind this process. Meanwhile, Facebook on Thursday launched a new way to inform people whether the content they are seeing on their timeline is cross-verified by a fact-checker. Facebook said in a blog post, “Whether it is false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we are making sure fewer people see the wrong information on our app.” There is pressure on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to implement a series of government-issued guidelines, including a demand to nominate key officers in the country, such as a resident complaints officer, a chief compliance officer And a nodal contact person. While the enforcement deadline was Wednesday, Facebook indicated it would abide by IT regulations but would “continue to discuss some issues,”