US social media giant Twitter closed horns with India on Wednesday, saying a government order to remove some accounts is not in line with Indian law.
The government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has ordered Twitter to remove more than 1,100 accounts and posts that they say are spreading misinformation about widespread protests by farmers against new agricultural laws.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitter said it does not comply with certain requests because it believes it is not in line with Indian law.
“In accordance with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts consisting of news media entities, journalists, activists and politicians,” he said.
The move puts the company and its executives at the center of a political firestorm. The government has threatened legal action that could lead to fines or jail time for Twitter officials responsible for implementing government directives.
It also comes after Twitter’s leading lobbyist in India, Mahima Kaul, resigned while the company tried to contain a growing link crisis.
Public opinion in one of Twitter’s most important markets is divided. Some advocates say Twitter should comply with or dispute the order in court, while activists blame the government for using legal provisions to restrict freedom of speech.
The Indian Ministry of Information Technology said it was unusual for Twitter to publish its blog post ahead of a scheduled meeting between company executives and its most senior official on Wednesday, adding that it would issue a response later.
But in a sign of growing dissatisfaction with Twitter, the IT ministry first posted its statement on Koo, where it has just 41,000 followers, less than a tenth of its Twitter.
Koo styg
Following the government orders, Twitter permanently suspended more than 500 accounts that he said were engaged in platform manipulation and spam. For many others, it has only limited access to India, and their tweets can still be read abroad.
For Twitter, interests are high in a country of 1.3 billion, where it has millions of users, and it is diligently used by Modi, its cabinet ministers and other leaders to communicate with the public. Twitter does not publish the number of Indian users.
As Twitter takes its toll, many Indian politicians and users are taking part in the homegrown Twitter-like social media platform that Koo launched last year.
#kooapp was the best Twitter trend in India on Wednesday with almost 21,000 posts, followed by #BanTwitter.
Twitter declined to comment on some of its users migrating to Koo.
Several people on Twitter, including Trade Minister Piyush Goyal, tweeted this week with the words “I’m on Koo now”. Goyal, who has 9.6 million Twitter followers, has a fixed tweet asking people to contact him on Indian platform.
Sambit Patra, a national spokesperson for Modi’s ruling party, and the head of IT, Amit Malviya, also joined Koo on Wednesday.
Koo, with a yellow bird as its logo, said downloads had increased tenfold in the past two days to more than 3 million.
“In the last 48 hours, most reports have taken place,” Mayoo Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo, told Reuters. “I’ve been sleeping for two hours in the last few days.”