Twitter 'withholds' accounts of farmer protesters, magazine among others, later restores them

Microblogging site Twitter on Monday restored several accounts after "withholding" them. These included accounts linked to the farmers’ protest at Delhi borders and the Caravan magazine.

The accounts which were withheld owing to "legal demand" included Kisan Ekta Morcha (@Kisanektamorcha) and BKU Ekta Urgahan (@Bkuektaugrahan).

The account of Caravan magazine, which goes by the handle @thecaravanindia, was also withheld. A number of individual accounts were also withheld.

According to Twitter, a “withheld” account is when the social media site is "compelled to withhold the entire account specified (e.g, @username) in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order."

The latest episode came after the Delhi Police registered cases against organisers of Republic Day tractor rally after it turned violent. A separate case was filed against Caravan and others for tweeting about the death of a farmer during the protest.

Later in the evening, the handles were restored.

A number of people came out in support of people whose accounts were withheld.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of Reuters Institute and Professor of Political Communication at University of Oxford, tweeted, "can you imagine Twitter or any other platform company doing something like this in the US, France, or Germany, withholding e.g. Atlantic, Nouvel Obs, or Spiegel, with no real transparency about legal demands received? Troubling to see profound inequality in platform governance."

Troubling that it is happening. And troubling how it is happening...The most fundamental problem is the erosion of fundamental rights including free expression and media freedom. Beyond that (I) have considerable respect for the Twitter policy team but still find handling of this troubling and hard to imagine would have been handled this way in the US or EU?" he said in other tweets.

Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a private watchdog, said reports suggest that a large number of Twitter accounts which were sharing information about the farmers' protests have been blocked by MeitY under the opaque Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.

"Section 69A and the IT Blocking Rules prevent intermediaries like Twitter from disclosing any information about blocking of an account or tweet. The confidentiality requirement present under Rule 16 of the IT Blocking Rules creates a bizarre situation where citizens have the right to challenge blocking of online content but they are unable to do so because they don't have access to these legal orders," it tweeted.