India, 25 May. The social media giant has a tense relationship with the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party Police searched Twitter’s office in India on Monday following the company’s decision to label multiple tweets from accounts linked to the country’s ruling party as manipulated media. The unexpected visit happened late on Monday after Twitter labeled multiple tweets last week for violating its synthetic and manipulated media policy, a person familiar with the matter confirmed. The policy forbids users from sharing things that “deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.”
The tweets from various Bharatiya Janata Party-linked accounts alleged that India’s rival Congress party had put out a document specifying failures by Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his handling of the coronavirus.Congress complained to Twitter that the document was fake, according to a Reuters report, and the social media company labeled a handful of the tweets promoting it as “manipulated media.”
Among the tweets that were labeled was one from BJP spokesman Sambit Patra, which angered members of the country’s leading political party who felt Twitter acted inappropriately. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.
Twitter last month removed or restricted access to more than 50 posts at the behest of the Indian government, including tweets that criticised its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The company has also previously applied its manipulated media policy to US politicians, including former president Donald Trump.
The social media giant permanently suspended more than 500 accounts and blocked access to hundreds of others in India earlier this year during farm protests, acceding to a government order to limit misinformation and inflammatory content.
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