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The curious case of Twitter suspensions

Minister’s account suspended for an hour for copyright violations, activists accounts still suspend for flagging Islamophobia

Image Courtesy:newrisingmedia.com

Twitter seems to have been on overdrive the past few days, suspending some accounts it deems violating its rules, while on the other hand many others who are openly inciting hate continue to do so unchecked. Many have blue ticks of verification. However, it is the reaction to such suspensions that is more telling than Twitter’s actions.

Most recently Muslim accounts which are known to actively flag hate crimes and abuse against the community, have been suspended. The most well known is of Mohammed Asif Khan, a social media influencer whose online activism includes sharing news of hate crimes, primarily against Muslims. From his Twitter handle @imMAK02, he regularly flags incidents of Islamophobia that continues to spread like venom across India. His account has now reportedly been suspended. Twitter explained it was for “violating our rules against ban evasion. You may not circumvent a Twitter suspension, enforcement action, or anti-spam challenge. This includes any behavior intended to evade any Twitter remediation, such as creating a new account or repurposing an already existing account.” According to a report in Maktoob Media, this was the email from Twitter to Asif Khan who has over 80,000 followers on Twitter.

He told mediapersons that this suspension may have been “by mistake,” and that he has filed an appeal with Twitter. His last tweet before suspension was about the UP Police arrest of the Muslim scholar under state’s draconian anti-conversion law, stated the news report. The suspension has highlighted the way Muslim activists are often singled out, both online and offline. This latest suspension has fuelled outrage among Twitter users, many of whom themselves are on alert to expose hate crimes and communal attacks, and have been subjected to censure, harassment and trolling.

 

 

Is Twitter keeping an eye on ‘Muslim accounts’?

Mohammed Asif Khan’s is just one of the three Muslim twitter accounts suspended on Friday, they too are known to post about incidents of various attacks on Indian Muslims. The other two are: @IndiasMuslims (India’s Muslims) and  @IndianMuslimahs (Indian Muslimahs).

In April this year, obeying, what seemed to be the Government of India’s orders to curb any critique of its mishandling of ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Twitter reportedly removed, or withheld over 50 tweets, many by activists and politicians, which have called out the way the government has let the crisis worsen. Twitter reportedly withheld the critical tweets after the legal request by the government. A Twitter spokesperson told the international media that the government of India in an emergency order had told it to censor 52 tweets, according to a disclosure notice on the Lumen database which is a project by Harvard University. Twitter and Facebook complied with the request, and withheld those posts from users in India, stated news reports. The censored accounts include that of politicians by Revanth Reddy (MP); Moloy Ghatak, (West Bengal minister), Zia Nomani (activists and politician), Vinod Kapri (filmmaker), and others.

On April 13, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a Muslim advocacy group, had their tweet comparing Kumbh Mela with Tablighi Jamaat blocked. They had just tweeted a Vice Media article about the Kumbh Mela saying, “As India’s Covid cases hit a new high, tens of thousands took a ritual bath together” and more text on an image of the Kumbh saying, “Tablighi Jamaat was ‘Corona Jihad’, but no one’s said a word about the Kumbh Mela with millions of attendees”. The post was taken down by Twitter allegedly  at the behest of the ruling regime. The IAMC condemned the action and “expressed dismay over the government of India’s continued obsession with managing the news coverage of the pandemic instead of the pandemic itself.”  

Mohammed Asif Khan’s account was one of them too. In his first person account after the recent suspension, published by Quint, he wrote that he created his Twitter account in 2011 and since then has “been frequently using Twitter since 2015-16. This was the time when cases of mob lynching and hate crimes against Muslims were on a rampant rise across India.” He claims to have “documented over 400  cases of mob violence and hate crimes against Muslims.” Many of his posts have been referred to by the media in their reports.  He writes that he only tweets after confirming and fact checking the incidents, adding that he has “lost everything” he documented after this suspension. He claims to have “received eight legal notices in the past six months where govt agencies reported my tweets for violating Indian laws; although neither the government nor Twitter has offered me any clarity regarding the laws I have been accused of violating.”

Twitter vs Ravi Shankar Prasad 

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, was ‘locked out’ of his Twitter account for about an hour. And as soon as it was active again, he took to sharing: “Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account.” Ironically, the minister shared this… on Twitter itself. According to him Twitter’s actions were in “gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account.”

A Twitter spokesperson was quick to clarify to the media that “the Honourable Minister’s account access was temporarily restricted due to a DMCA notice only and the referenced tweet has been withheld. Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives.” Prasad had reportedly used a clip that had musician A R Rahman’s song ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’. 

The minister, however, chose to link Twitter’s action against copyright violation as a response to his statements “calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers.” His sentiments were faithfully supported by his friends and colleagues. 

Twitter is the first United States-based social media platform to lose legal protection in India. Twitter India has been in a contentious relationship with the Government, even though it usually complies with government orders to remove tweets seen as “objectionable or fake news by the authorities. Twitter has also often withheld accounts, sending its own notices to users who are identified as being critical of government, politics, politicians. Twitter is now going to be held responsible for all “tweets, data hosted by it”. In February the Centre had issued a notice to Twitter India after it “unilaterally” unblocked over 250 handles mostly covering the kisan andolan. These were the accounts the Government had ordered Twitter to block.  

What does Twitter do to accounts that target Muslims?

Not much it seems. Citizens for Justice and Peace has sent a complaint to Twitter bringing its attention to certain abusive accounts on Twitter that indulge in a sexualised campaign against Muslim women. The complaint has listed some unchecked accounts that promote material that is not only pornographic but also glorifies sexual violence against Muslim women. There are several such accounts on Twitter with content that demean Muslim women as “sex objects for Hindu men”. The complaint mentions how this is clearly also happening in an organized manner which is both obscene and illegal and the fact that they keep springing up on Twitter by changing their names after their accounts get (sometimes) suspended is a matter of grave concern. 

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