IT Minister says Twitter denied access to his account for an hour today

My comments calling out high handedness, arbitrary actions of Twitter have clearly ruffled feathers, Ravi Shankar Prasad says

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (IT) Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday claimed that Twitter has denied access to his account for almost an hour today on the alleged ground that there was a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the US. 

The social media giant subsequently allowed him to access the account.

"Twitter's actions were in gross violation of Rule 4 (8) of 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," said Prasad.

Hitting out at Twitter in a series of posts, Prasad said that his comments calling out high handedness, arbitrary actions of Twitter have clearly ruffled feathers.

"Further, it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual’s account which does not suit their agenda," the minister tweeted.

Prasad said that Twitter’s actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not tow the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform.

Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier said that he was not okay with profit-making companies lecturing India on democracy and that any social media firm has to comply with the new IT rules. 

“There are 100-crore social media users in India, I am happy. Let them earn money, allow users to criticise us. Most welcome. But when these profit companies lecture us on democracy, then I would like to ask a question,” he had said.