New Delhi: Elon Musk-run Twitter banned a record 11,32,228 accounts in India between April 26 and May 25 in what the company owner cited his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US who told him that a company “doesn’t have a choice but to obey local governments.”
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 India.
In total, Twitter banned 11,34,071 accounts in the reporting period in India, IANS reported.
Twitter, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it 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.
Most complaints from India were about abuse/harassment (264), followed by hateful conduct (84), sensitive adult content (67), and defamation (51).
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.
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 not block 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.
