Twitter concerned by potential threat to freedom of speech in India

According to details, Indian government has said Twitter must obey the upcoming regulation.

Tensions between the government and media firms have risen over new rules for digital content after Twitter had applied the label to a post by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Sambit Patra.

Reportedly, leaders of the BJP had shared screenshots of a document on Twitter recently that they said had been created by the main opposition Congress party to highlight government failures over the handling of the pandemic.

Following which congress complained to twitter, that the documents were fake, leading tech giant to mark some of the posts including one by Mr Patra as ‘manipulated media’.

Under Twitter rules, it applies such tags to posts that include media that have been deceptively altered or fabricated".

"Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve," a Twitter spokesperson stated.

"We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global terms of service, as well as with core elements of the new IT rules."

Delhi police say their visit to Twitter's offices on Monday was to serve a notice to the company's managing director after receiving a complaint about how Mr Patra's tweet had been classified.

Later on Thursday, the government accused Twitter of "attempting to dictate its terms to the world's largest democracy" and seeking to undermine the country's legal system.

"Twitter needs to stop beating about the bush and comply with the laws of the land," the statement said.

In February, the government introduced new guidelines to regulate digital content on social media and streaming platforms.

Under the new rules, social media platforms with more than five million users would be required to appoint a compliance officer, a nodal contact officer and a resident grievance officer.

In addition, they would have to track the originator of a particular message if asked by a court or the government.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp were given three months to comply with these rules and regulations

Earlier this week, WhatsApp has filed a legal complaint against the Indian government, seeking to block upcoming regulations, that experts say would compel Facebook to break privacy protections.

The lawsuit, asks the Delhi High Court (DHC) to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights in India’s constitution since it requires social media companies to identify the first originator of information, when authorities demand it.

While the law requires WhatsApp to unmask only people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do that alone in practice. Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, to comply with the law WhatsApp says it would have break encryption for receivers, as well as “originators”, of messages.

WhatsApp has nearly 400 million users in India. The people with knowledge of the matter declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.