New Delhi: The government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.
The backlash came as New Delhi turned up the heat on Twitter, threatening "appropriate and suitable action" if it failed to remove the accounts as soon as possible. Several Indian newspapers said this could mean a total ban on access to Twitter in India but government officials would not confirm to Reuters that such a drastic step was being considered.
Twitter, which does not have an office in India, declined to comment. There are about 16 million Twitter users in the South Asian country.
The government has found itself on the defensive this week over what critics see as a clumsy clampdown on social media websites - including Google, YouTube and Facebook - that has raised questions about freedom of information in the world's largest democracy....
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09:34 AM, Aug 24, 2012
Washington: The US on Thursday advised India to ensure Internet freedom while seeking to preserve national security, as the Indian government asked social networking websites to check pages carrying inflammatory messages. "As the Indian government seeks to preserve security, we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world," State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told reporters at her daily news conference....
08:14 AM, Aug 24, 2012
New Delhi: With Assam still tense following the communal violence in some of its districts, the Central Government is trying to block offensive content on social media websites, which it claims have been responsible for the hate campaign against Northeast Indians. The government has given the microblogging site Twitter and other social media websites a deadline of 12 hours deadline to remove the objectionable content or face a shutdown in...
12:52 PM, Aug 23, 2012
New Delhi: The government has confirmed that no accounts on the microblogging site Twitter have been blocked so far, sources said on Thursday. They claimed that the Ministry of Home Affairs' request for show cause notice to offensive and provocative handles was still pending with Twitter. In the wake of the mass exodus by Indians from the Northeast, the government had proposed cracking down on hate content on social media...
10:34 AM, Aug 23, 2012
Jamshedpur: In the ongoing crackdown against hate content on social media websites in the wake of the northeast exodus, a former journalist in Jamshedpur was arrested on Thursday for allegedly posting inflammatory messages online. The police seized his computer and hard disk. A probe is on. Meanwhile, 19 more suspects have been arrested in the Azad Maidan violence case. While two of them were produced in court on Wednesday and...
09:16 AM, Aug 23, 2012
