Social-Media
In India, police raided Twitter offices in connection with an investigation into tweets labeled as -manipulated media.
The Indian Express announced that Indian police raided Twitter India offices in Delhi and Gurgaon on Monday as part of an investigation into why tweets about a so-called "toolkit" of facts about the coronavirus is classified as distorted media. According to the news site, police had sent a note to Twitter requesting an explanation for the branding on a tweet from a member of the ruling party, and that they were looking for "information Twitter has about the toolkit and why they chose to give the manipulated media' label."
Delhi Police Special Cell team returns from Gurgaon after they find the Twitter India offices shut. Apparently there is work from home at @TwitterIndia since March last year. Was this move by Government to send out a message? pic.twitter.com/aCBfjhb5CC
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) May 24, 2021
On Monday, Twitter declined to comment. According to TechCrunch, no Twitter staff were present at the time of the raid, which took place late Monday evening in India Standard Time. Twitter workers in India are now operating remotely, according to journalist Aditya Raj Kaul.
The Indian government sent a notice to Twitter on Friday, two days after the social media site labeled a tweet by India's ruling BJP party's Sambit Patra as "manipulated media." The opposition party Congress had used a "toolkit" to disrupt the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Patra said in the tweet, which seems to have been deleted. Out of fairness and justice, the government requested that Twitter drop the mark.
According to the Times of India, the BJP claims the toolkit was developed to harm Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but the Congress claims the version of the toolkit circulated by the BJP was a falsified version of a study note on an unrelated initiative. The photographs of the so-called "COVID toolkit" that Patra and others tweeted about included some false evidence, according to the Indian fact-checking organisation Alt News.
Last February, Twitter announced its distorted information policy, which refers to data that has been "significantly and deceptively edited or invented" and posted on the platform.
False content presented as true or content found to be likely to affect public safety or cause serious harm could be labeled, and false content presented as true or content found to be likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm could be omitted completely under the regulations. The term was added to many tweets by former US President Donald Trump, who was later barred from Twitter.
The Indian government has attempted to maintain close control over knowledge about the dissemination of COVID-19 on social media. Last month, the government ordered Twitter to erase tweets critical of its treatment of the pandemic, as well as Facebook and Instagram to remove articles.
In March, the Indian government threatened to imprison employees of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter if they did not comply with its demands to remove posts related to farmer protests.
ry if they did not agree with its demands to remove content about farmer demonstrations. Following a government warning of noncompliance, Twitter permanently blocked over 500 accounts and removed others from being available throughout the region.
On Monday, India recorded 222,315 new cases of COVID-19 and 4,454 new deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
