Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that Twitter had blocked his account for an hour. However, screenshots of the Twitter notice shared by Prasad showed that the social media giant had found the union minister guilty of copyright violations. One notice by Twitter even warned Prasad that future violations could lead to his account being suspended.
The notice said, “Your account is now available for use. Please be aware that any additional notices against your account may result in your account being locked again and potentially suspended. In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorized to post.”
Taking to Prasad had written on Friday, “Twitter’s actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not tow the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform.”
Prasad, who heads India’s IT ministry has been at the forefront of formulating and implementing the controversial IT rules meant for digital news entities and social media platforms. Twitter had allegedly failed to comply with the IT Rules by 26 May, the deadline issued by the government for compliance.
