Over Half Of The Tweets Taken Down On Govt Orders Were Harmless, Claims Twitter

Karnataka High Court on Monday heard a petition by microblogging platform, Twitter against the Central Government’s orders asking them to block accounts, URLs and tweets, reveals a PTI report.

Reuters

In the first week of September, Twitter had challenged the orders on the grounds of violation of the freedom of speech and the authorities not issuing notice to the alleged violators, before asking Twitter to take down content. MeitY, on September 1, had filed a 101-page statement of objection to Twitter’s petition.

Senior Advocate, Arvind Datar, representing Twitter argued that the company was only following the rules laid out in the Information Technology Act. He stated that orders for taking down accounts without issuing notice to the alleged violators was affecting the platform. The Central government was asking major batches of accounts to be blocked that would affect their business, he claimed.?

Datar highlighted that instead of blocking a particular tweet that was problematic, the government was ordered to take down the whole account instead.

He highlighted that Twitter was asked to block accounts reporting farmer’s protests whereas TV news and print media continued their reporting.?

In another case involving one ‘Shreya Singhal’, IT Act Blocking rules were upheld stating that it was mandatory for notice to be issued even to intermediaries such as Twitter and to hear their side before blocking orders are issued.?

Reuters

He, therefore, claimed that all of the blocking orders were against the Supreme Court and the IT Act Blocking rules 6 and 8. He also presented an instance of a specific blocking order where the platform was asked to block 1,178 accounts. Neither the account holders were informed, nor Twitter was allowed to inform them. He argued that the requirements for Section 69A of the IT act weren’t being followed.?

Datar also highlighted that Twitter accepts there are tweets which aren’t acceptable and Twitter proactively removes them. However, in several instances, tweets that were justifiable were ordered to be blocked.

Twitter concluded by stating that it was simply seeking to follow procedure and issue notices before blocking tweets. The High Court adjourned the hearing to October 17.