Twitter Denied Access to My Account For Almost an Hour Today, Says IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

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, the minister said.

Updated: June 25, 2021 4:01 PM IST

By India.com News Desk | Edited by Priyanka

Ravi Shankar Prasad said this is a major reform which the Centre has taken.
IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad lauds Facebook and Google for publishing their compliance report.

New Delhi: Union Minister for Information & Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that social media giant Twitter denied access to his account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA. Subsequently they allowed me to access the account, the IT Minister said. “Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4 (8) of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account,” Prasad said in a series of tweets.

“It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers,” he claimed.

“Further, it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual’s account which does not suit their agenda,” he added. Furthermore, in the past several years, no television channel or any anchor has made any complaints about copyright infringements with regard to these news clips of my interviews shared on social media, Prasad claimed.

“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,” he said. “No matter what any platform does they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that,” he further added.

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