Twitter Says 50-60 Percent of Tweets in Takedown Orders ‘Innocuous’

The High Court of Karnataka on Monday heard a petition by microblogging platform Twitter towards the Central authorities’s orders asking it to dam some accounts, URLs, and tweets. Twitter had challenged the orders on grounds of violation of freedom of speech and the authorities not issuing discover to the alleged violators earlier than asking Twitter to take down content material. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had on September 1 filed a 101-page assertion of objection to Twitter’s petition. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, showing for Twitter on Monday on-line, argued the corporate was following the foundations specified by the Information Technology Act.

He contended that Twitter as a platform was affected by the Centre asking it to take down accounts with out issuing discover to the alleged violators.

The Centre was asking for wholesale blocking of accounts which is able to have an effect on its enterprise, in line with him.

He mentioned a number of distinguished individuals have accounts on Twitter.  Another rivalry Datar raised was that as an alternative of blocking the tweet that was deemed improper, it was being instructed to dam the account itself due to political content material.

He cited the instance of farmers’ protest in Delhi and claimed content material that was telecast within the information media was requested to be blocked on Twitter.

“During the farmers’ protest I was told to block accounts. TV and print media are reporting. Why ask me to block accounts?,” he argued.

Datar cited the Supreme Court within the ‘Shreya Singhal’ case the place the IT Act Blocking Rules have been upheld and mentioned it was obligatory for discover to be issued even to intermediaries like Twitter and listen to them earlier than blocking orders are handed.

Therefore, he claimed that every one blocking orders issued by the MeitY have been towards the SC judgement and the IT Act Blocking Rules 6 and eight.  The senior advocate introduced the instance of a selected blocking order during which Twitter was instructed to dam 1,178 accounts. The authorities didn’t inform them (account holders) and Twitter was additionally not allowed to tell them.  Datar argued that necessities of Section 69A of the IT Act weren’t adopted. He cited the instance of 1 Tweet which the federal government ordered to be eliminated.   Datar argued that Twitter itself blocks tweets which it considers flawed.

He mentioned tweets selling “Khalistan ” are blocked by Twitter.  However, 50 to 60 per cent of tweets that are asked by the government to be blocked are “innocuous”.  Datar said Twitter accepts that there are tweets which are not acceptable and Twitter routinely removed them. Even in government orders there were tweets that were justifiable to be blocked. All that Twitter was seeking was following procedure and issuing notices before blocking tweets. It was also stressed that blocking the account instead of the individual tweets was the cause of concern.  A Delhi High Court judgement was cited in which the owner of a blocked account approached the court. The Centre was also made a party which had argued that blocking the entire account was wrong. The HC had given a judgement that Twitter cannot suspend an entire account unless a majority of the tweets from that account is unlawful.

The High Court adjourned the hearing to October 17.