Twitter bans over 45,000 accounts in India for violating guidelines

Twitter, which is locked in a legal battle with the Indian government over content blocking orders, banned 45,191 accounts of the Indian users in the month of July over violation of its guidelines, the microblogging platform said in its monthly compliance report on Friday.

Twitter suspended 42,825 accounts for promoting child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and similar content in India, while blocking another 2,366 accounts for promoting terrorism, it said in its monthly compliance report as per the new IT Rules, 2021.

The microblogging platform received 874 grievances in the country through its local grievance mechanism between June 26-July 25, and took action on 70 complaints.

In June, Twitter had banned more than 43,140 accounts of the Indian users.

"While we welcome everyone to express themselves on our platform, we do not tolerate behaviour that harasses, threatens, dehumanises, or uses fear to silence the voices of others," Twitter said in the report.

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

Twitter receives complaints in its Grievance Officer-India channel that relate to account verification, account access, or seeking assistance or information regarding an account or Twitter's enforcement actions.

In addition, Twitter processed 124 grievances which were appealing account suspensions.

"These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent. We overturned none of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation," said the company.

The compliance report came as whistleblower Peiter Zatko, former head of security at Twitter, alleged that the Indian government forced the platform to "hire a government agent on its payroll" and "grant access to sensitive user data", a claim which has been dismissed by Twitter.

In May, Twitter moved the Karnataka High Court against the Indian government's order to take down some content on its platform.

Meanwhile, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in its 101-page statement of objections before the Karnataka High Court has termed the microblogging platform Twitter of being defiant to the laws of the land.

The case is slated to be heard on September 8. MeitY filed its statement of objections to the court on Thursday.

In the objections, the Centre said, "The petitioner deliberately remained non-compliant and defiant to the laws of the land. Only on the diligent follow up of the respondent No.2 and upon the issuance of show cause notice dated 27.06.2022 the Petitioner for reasons best known to it suddenly complied with all the blocking directions."

(with agency inputs)