Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology headed by BJP’s Anurag Thakur has summoned Twitter India officials on 11th February where Twitter India and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) will present their views on the issue of ‘safeguarding citizens’ rights on social/online news media platforms.
The Parliamentary Commitee on Information Technology will examine the issue:
SAFEGUARDING CITIZENS RIGHTS ON SOCIAL/ONLINE NEWS MEDIA PLATFORMS
MEITY & TWITTER will present their views.
You can tweet/email your views:
[email protected] pic.twitter.com/bDYoSv5OHd— Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) February 5, 2019
The panel has 21 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members. Thakur has also sought views and suggestions from general public which could be emailed on [email protected].
On Sunday, several Twitter users led a silent protest in Delhi against Twitter’s left-wing bias and deliberate silencing of opposite ideology.
The curious case of Twitter censoring social media users for disagreeing to left-wing and ultra wing ideology at the time of crucial general elections has upset several social media 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.
This is not the first time that right-wing accounts, fact-checking accounts and other social media users who disagree with the left-wing accounts have faced bans and scrutiny from the Twitter. Recently, tweets from Scientist Anand Ranganathan, a free speech warrior and filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri were withheld by the Twitter ‘in response to a legal demand’.
Twitter is fast becoming a platform where ideological battles are fought, at times, by stifling the voice of those they disagree with and Twitter’s ‘hateful conduct’ policy reveals a definite left-wing bias. Facing accusations of discriminating against conservatives on the social media platform, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an interview to CNN had admitted that most of the employees of Twitter have a left-leaning bias.
Recently Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had created a furore in India by posing with a placard that declared ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’, an extremist Leftist trope of demonising an entire community. Later Twitter India’s legal head had apologised profusely to everyone for hurting their sentiments. A local court in Jodhpur, Rajasthan has also admitted a plea against Dorsey over the anti-Brahmin placard.
