Amid the tussle between Twitter and the union government over the new IT rules, Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was denied access to his Twitter account for almost an hour over alleged violation of the US' Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
When he was subsequently allowed to access the account, the minister made tweets calling the action by the US-headquartered Twitter as "a gross violation of the IT guidelines".
"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," he said.
Prasad, who has been at the forefront of government's drive to bring in more compliance and stricter norms for social media platforms, added: "It is apparent that my 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."
The minister also 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 toe the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform.
"No matter what any platform does they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that," he added.
With inputs from IANS.
