Twitter blocks over 50 posts criticizing govt's handling of pandemic

New Delhi: Microblogging platform Twitter has removed 52 posts related to coronavirus following orders from the ruling government, stated a report from technology news website Medianama.

Twitter has removed 52 posts

The majority of these tweets were critical about the way the central government is handling the second wave of coronavirus infections as country is grappling with breakdown of health infrastructure.

The report filed by Medianama stated that many of the removed tweets had content related to shortage of medicines, beds, mass cremations, and the gathering of crowds at Kumbh Mela amid the pandemic. These news, which have been blocked for users in India, will continue to remain visible outside the country.

Some of the verified accounts for which the tweets have been removed include, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera, member of parliament Revanth Reddy, a minister from West Bengal Moloy Ghatak, ABP News editor Pankaj Jha, actor Vineet Kumar Singh, film-maker Avinash Das and film-maker and former journalist Vinod Kapri.

The details of the order received by Twitter have been put up on the Lumen database, a project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University that collects and analyzes requests to remove material from the web.

According to Twitter, in order for content related to covid-19 to be labelled or removed under this policy, it must advance a claim of fact, expressed in definitive terms, demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources and likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm.

Earlier in February, the Centre had pulled up Twitter for unblocking over 250 accounts that used controversial hashtag referring to farmer's genocide and Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid the ongoing protests by farmers against the new farm laws.

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