Twitter denies Ravi Shankar Prasad access to his account, says IT minister

Row over New IT Rules? Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that Twitter had denied access to his account for almost an hour on the alleged "ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA." Soon after receiving access to his account, Ravi Shankar Prasad took to Twitter and wrote: "Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. 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." Also Read | Moody’s slashes India growth forecast for 2021 to 9.6 percent "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," he added. Also Read | Kangana Ranaut sparks new row, urges India’s name to be changed to ‘Bharat’ "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 said further. He also said that 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 him with any prior notice before denying him access to his own account. It may be recalled that Twitter lost its intermediary status due to non-compliance with new IT rules. Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that he was not the one who declared the removal of Twitter’s intermediary status, the law did. Click here to follow PTC News on Twitter -PTC News

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