Fearing action from the parliamentary committee, the micro-blogging site Twitter has sent its Director, Policy for South Asia, Mahima Kaul to represent the organisation in the committee hearing as they were summoned over the issue of safeguarding citizens’ rights on social media platforms.
The Parliamentary Committee on IT headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur had summoned Twitter officials on 11th February along with the officials of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to present their views regarding the issue of bias towards the right-wing twitter accounts.
Initially, the micro-blogging site officials displayed their arrogance by refusing to appear before the Parliamentary Committee citing “short notice of the hearing”. It seems that Twitter has obliged to appear before the committee after BJP MP Anurag Thakur, head of the committee had issued a statement saying that appropriate action will be taken against them for failing to respect summons issued by the parliamentary committee.
Twitter will be represented by its South Asia Director Mahima Kaul (@misskaul) and other officials. Mahima Kaul, who has been appointed to head the policy division of Twitter, has been known for her anti-Modi and pro-Rahul inclinations which has been indicated by her tweets in the past further proving the left-leaning bias of the platform.
The mysterious behavior 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.
