Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT had summoned the Twitter officials today to know their views on ‘safeguarding citizens’ rights on social/online news media platforms. Accordingly, Twitter India had sent a team led by Mahima Kaul, Director, Policy for South Asia. But the Committee refused to hear the representatives, and re-summoned Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey on February 25, giving 15-day advance notice for the same.
Jack Dorsey had earlier evaded the summon citing “short notice of the hearing” as the reason, despite being given 10 days to travel.
The committee meeting was scheduled for February 7 but was later postponed to February 11 to allow the Twitter CEO and senior officials more time to make themselves available.
Despite this, the Twitter CEO did not appear today. Fearing action from the parliamentary committee, the micro-blogging site sent a team led by Mahima Kaul.
However, at its meeting today, the panel refused to meet Twitter representatives who had come and demanded that the firm’s chief executive appear for such a serious issue.
Meanwhile, there has been no word from Twitter yet if its chief executive, or his deputy, can meet the new timeline.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur, had summoned Twitter officials on February 11, along with the officials of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to present their views regarding the issue of bias against right-wing twitter accounts.
The panel has 21 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members. Thakur has also sought views and suggestions from the general public which could be emailed on ([email protected].)
On February 10, several Twitter users led a silent protest in Delhi against Twitter’s left-wing bias and deliberate silencing of opposite ideology.
The mysterious behaviour of Twitter which is often found censoring social media users for disagreeing to left-wing and ultra left-wing ideology at the time of crucial general elections has angered several users. With opposition parties and Lutyens media ecosystem backed by the Congress party indulging in false narratives and propaganda, right-wing users have expressed fear that more fake news may emerge in the social media platforms.
It is also accused that several prominent right-wing accounts are shadow-banned by Twitter. This means while the account is not blocked or suspended, the Tweets posted by that account do not appear on the timeline of the followers of that accounts. Tweets from such ‘shadow-banned’ accounts do not appear in search results also, effectively meaning that tweets of such persons remain invisible to users unless they visit the Twitter account page of such persons.
