India’s right-wing brigade has been up in arms against Twitter India for its alleged biases against the country’s right-wing brigade. The controversy gained momentum after a parliamentary panel headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear before the committee this month. As expected, Dorsey gave the panel a miss, leaving the BJP MP and his supporters incensed.
Days later, supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP took to Twitter to highlight that they were experiencing abnormal pattern in the number of retweets on their social media posts. This prompted them to allege that Twitter was once again showing biases against them.
Hello @TwitterIndia @jack
Why you are shadowing my tweets ?
2day I posted on #RafaleDeal n you reduced RT from more than 470 to 300 ! Why ?
Are You also fighting Indian Parliament election in 2019??
Whose fake reputation U r guarding ??
Where is your ethics of transparency?? pic.twitter.com/95f7qerBbO— Major Surendra Poonia (@MajorPoonia) February 12, 2019
Something not right with @Twitter @TwitterIndia
Suddenly retweet counts on every tweet going down. I just noticed on @SriSri account. Compare the screenshot below.
From thousands of retweeted to two digits and even lesser. #TwitterMischief#ShameOnTwitterIndia pic.twitter.com/CV3g1RV07c— Kamlesh Barwal (@KamleshBarwal) February 12, 2019
India reposed it’s faith in you but you cheated us @TwitterIndia
Great companies are built on trust & honesty. Deceit is the hallmark of Congress, whom you are trying to campaign for
Within 2 hours retweets were around 2000 & 4000 likes then reduced @BJP4India#TwitterCheater pic.twitter.com/XRlS2jK29e
— Gaurav Bhatia ?? (@gauravbh) February 13, 2019
However, Twitter issued a clarification, apologising for the inconvenience. It said that the anomaly in retweets was due to a technical glitch, which the platform was working on ‘resolving.’ “Some people around the world are experiencing an issue with notifications, Likes, and Retweets. We’re working on resolving this and will follow up soon. We apologize for the inconvenience,” it said.
Some people around the world are experiencing an issue with notifications, Likes, and Retweets. We’re working on resolving this and will follow up soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 12, 2019
The anomaly in retweets wasn’t just confined to Indian users as claimed by BJP supporters, who detected a conspiracy. Users from around the world too complained about the sudden drop in their retweets.
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH @Twitter?!. For my last several posts, posted a few hours ago, the number of retweets and likes suddenly declined, dropping hundreds of retweets and likes.
ARE YOU EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM?
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) February 12, 2019
Twitter is undoing people’s retweets and likes on my post. Look at how quickly the numbers are dropping within one minute of catching this ? cc: @benshapiro @RubinReport @michellemalkin @MrAndyNgo pic.twitter.com/wqZQsYgXJX
— Shireen Qudosi (@ShireenQudosi) February 12, 2019
Is there a glitch on twitter? I noticed a huge drop on the number of retweets/likes. It used to be hundreds earlier. It disappears overtime.?
When you click the retweets/likes there’s actually hundreds but the number doesn’t reflect accurately. pic.twitter.com/s6wsWzsRDs— Alexis Alexander (@alexisfaye15) February 12, 2019