R&I – FS
The clash between the Indian government and Twitter has once again exposed contradictions and double standards on both sides.
The Centre has threatened to take legal action against Twitter, accusing it of bias in its resistance to taking down pro-farmers’ protest accounts that New Delhi claims could have caused a law and order problem. Information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad likened the events at the Red Fort on January 26 to the violent assault on Capitol Hill by an armed mob just weeks earlier.
Here lies the heart of the matter that has vexed relations between governments and social media platforms. As American companies, platforms like Twitter or Facebook have often taken cover under the First Amendment of the US Constitution ― the broad umbrella that ensures absolute protection for speech, unlike India’s Article 19(2), which imposes reasonable restrictions on speech that may incite violence or discriminate against individuals or groups based on protected characteristics such as faith, caste or gender, or speech that is deemed to be against the spirit of unity and integrity of the country.
At the time of the Capitol Hill attack, the US’s incoming President Joe Biden declared it an insurrection against democracy. Twitter sparked global debate by suspending several handles, including sitting president Donald Trump’s, for posting videos and comments sharing support for the mob engaged in the assault, and the conspiratorial rationale behind it, and violating its user guidelines by having virtually incited acts of real-world violence.
In India, Twitter has argued that it blocked many accounts on the government’s request but refused to block several others that were consistent with the company’s free speech policies, though intensely critical of the Modi government’s handling of the farmers’ protests.
In the former, discriminatory speech is self-evident, while in the latter, restrictions have been misused and abused time and again by successive governments to silence critics.
FoundingFrog
Article URL : https://thewire.in/tech/twitter-modi-government-spat-global-debate-jurisdiction-regulation-social-media