In six months of 2022, orders to dam Twitter content material, handles previous 2019 determine

Content and account blocking orders issued to Twitter by the Centre within the first six months of 2022 have exceeded the variety of such orders issued to the social media platform within the entirety of 2019. According to knowledge shared by Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar with the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, 1,122 blocking orders have been issued to Twitter till June 2022, in comparison with 1,041 such orders in the entire of 2019.

In 2021, Twitter was issued 2,851 blocking orders below Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the very best for any yr, knowledge shared by Chandrashekhar revealed. This coincides with the microblogging platform blocking greater than 250 accounts in relation to sharing “provocative” tweets over the then ongoing farmers’ protests and the corporate receiving orders from the federal government to take down some tweets important of the federal government’s dealing with of Covid-19.

Notably, 2021 was additionally the yr when a group of Delhi Police’s Special Cell had knocked on the doorways of Twitter India’s Delhi and Gurgaon places of work to ostensibly serve the social media platform a discover after the platform flagged some posts by ruling occasion leaders alleging a Congress plot to malign the Prime Minister and the Central authorities as “manipulated media”.

Section 69 (A) of the IT Act, 2000, permits the Centre to situation blocking orders to social media intermediaries “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above”.

As per guidelines that govern these blocking orders, any request made for blocking by the federal government is additional despatched to a evaluate committee, which then points ultimate instructions.

Data shared with Parliament additionally revealed that since not less than 2016, blocking orders issued to Twitter have fashioned a serious portion of the overall blocking orders issued to social media platoforms annually, with an exception in 2018. For occasion, in a solution in Lok Sabha in December final yr, Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that in 2016, the federal government issued a complete of 633 blocking orders below Section 69(A) of the IT Act. In the identical yr, as per knowledge introduced by Chandrashekhar on Wednesday, Twitter was issued 194 blocking orders, which means that it accounted for greater than 30 per cent of all blocking orders issued that yr.

Similarly, in 2017, the federal government issued a complete of 1,385 blocking orders, of which 588 have been issued to Twitter, accounting for greater than 42 per cent of all blocking orders. To make certain, the overall blocking orders might be issued to numerous social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, together with web site blocking orders issued to numerous telecom service suppliers (TSPs).

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In 2018, censorship orders to Twitter took a downward flip, accounting for a paltry 8 per cent of the two,799 blocking orders issued that yr. In 2019, Twitter accounted for over 28 per cent of the overall 3,635 blocking orders, and in 2020, it obtained greater than 27 per cent of the overall 9,849 blocking orders.

Between February 2021 and 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is learnt to have directed Twitter to take down over 1,400 accounts and 175 tweets below Section 69 (A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Twitter has moved the Karnataka High Court, searching for to quash blocking orders for 39 of these hyperlinks flagged by the Ministry, based on the petition filed by the social media big earlier this month.

Incidentally, between 2014 and 2020, the variety of content material blocking orders issued to numerous social media firms and TSPs by the federal government additionally elevated by nearly 2,000 per cent – from 471 in 2014 to 9,849 in 2020, highlighting the rising pattern of on-line censorship in India.