Twitter alleges threat to free speech; it's defying Indian laws, counters govt

Only One Scuttling Free Speech Is Twitter: Min

- Pankaj Doval

New Delhi: Hours after Twitter accused the Indian government of using force and fear to block legitimate free speech, the IT ministry shot back, charging the company with deliberately subverting the law of the land and trying to “dictate” its terms even while using “opaque policies” to “arbitrarily” suspend user accounts and delete tweets.

“…The only instance of scuttling free speech on Twitter is Twitter itself and its opaque policies, as a result of which people’s accounts are suspended and tweets deleted arbitrarily without recourse,” the government said, asking the company to “stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land”. The government said that “law-making and policy formulation is the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform, and it has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be”. Dismissing Twitter’s concerns related to the safety of its employees, the IT ministry said that representatives of social media companies, including Twitter, “are and will always remain safe in India and there is no threat to their personal safety and security”.