Twitter bans record over 11 lakh accounts for policy violations in India

Elon Musk-run Twitter banned a record 11,32,228 accounts in India between April 26 and May 25, mostly for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity. The micro-blogging platform, going through a churning under Musk who has now appointed a new Twitter CEO in Linda Yaccarino, also took down 1,843 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country.

In total, Twitter banned 11,34,071 accounts in the reporting period in India.

Twitter, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it had received 518 complaints from users in India in the same time-frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms.

In addition, Twitter processed 90 grievances which were appealing account suspensions.

"We overturned 25 of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation. The remaining reported accounts remain suspended," said the company.

"We received 29 requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period," it added.

Most complaints from India were about abuse/harassment (264), followed by hateful conduct (84), sensitive adult content (67), and defamation (51).

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

Meanwhile, under Musk, Twitter recently approved a staggering 83 per cent of government requests to either restrict or block content globally, including in India and Turkey, the media reported.

Last month, when asked about former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's wild claim that the Indian government had threatened to ban Twitter if it did notblock certain accounts, Musk told reporters after his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US that a company "doesn't have a choice but to obey local governments".

"If we don't obey local government laws, then we will get shut down. So the best we can do is really to hew close to the law in any given country," he said.

“It is impossible for us to do more than that (or) we will be blocked and our people will be arrested,” Musk added.