Twitter bans record over 25L accounts for policy violations in India

Elon Musk-run Twitter banned a record 25,51,623 accounts in India between March 26 and April 25

New Delhi: Elon Musk-run Twitter banned a record 25,51,623 accounts in India between March 26 and April 25, for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity.

The micro-blogging platform, going through a churning under its new owner, also took down 2,249 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country.

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In total, Twitter banned 25,53,881 accounts in the reporting period in India.

Twitter, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it received just 158 complaints from users in India in the same time-frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms.

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

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

“We did not receive any requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period,” it added.

Most complaints from India were about abuse/harassment (83), followed by sensitive adult content (41), hateful conduct (19), and defamation (12).

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.

Since Musk’s takeover in October 2022, the micro-blogging platform received 971 requests from governments, according to a report in El Pais, a Spanish-language daily newspaper.

When Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias shared the report on Twitter on Monday, with the caption “I’m a free speech absolutist”, an angry Musk reacted: “You’re such a numbskull. Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.”