Twitter and the Confused Business of Social Media

Twitter

The latest row around Twitter blocking hundreds of accounts in India on a government directive exposes the many fault lines existing in the social media business. 

Social media is a chaotic space. A loud cacophony of content marks its presence in most markets, including India. As a result, it is a policy nightmare. Lawmakers are often confused about how to approach the sector as they cannot really fathom the complex workings of social media. Evidently, such perplexity paves the way for compromises, not only from policymakers but also from users and even from social media companies. The latest row in India over the way Twitter banned more than 1,000 accounts, allegedly acting upon a legal (government) order reflects such a precarious condition. 

Interestingly, this is not the first time Twitter has banned or suspended user accounts en masse. Recently, the microblogging platform permanently suspended more than 70,000 accounts that promoted the far-right conspiracy theory of QAnon. Twitter’s official release said these accounts were engaged in “sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.” 

The move was lauded by social media watchers across the globe. Many felt that the suspension of the accounts, which came a few days after  former US President Donald Trump gaslighted a crowd to break into the US Capitol building. But in India, controversy erupted when Twitter started blocking  accounts and posts that India’s IT ministry had stamped provocative and fake. Included among them were accounts of senior politicians and activists. 

Twit for tat

According to reports, the accounts that the right-wing Modi government wanted removed from Twitter were the ones that were critical of the government stance on the ongoing farmer agitations against the three controversial laws. Capital Delhi was recently rocked by protests led by farmers from states such as Punjab and Haryana and there has been widespread criticism from across the globe against the way the BJP government has been handling the political crisis. 

To be fair, Twitter initially decided to ignore the government diktat but it had to give it when pressure mounted as the Modi government hinted at imprisoning the social media giant’s India representatives if the order on removing the contentious uses was not respected. Twitter’s India team recently held a discussion with the Information Technology Secretary on February 10 in which the government official had delivered an ultimatum to the US microblogging platform. Union minister for IT Ravi Shankar Prasad went on to hint that Twitter was disrespecting democratic values, which was not acceptable.

As expected, Twitter soon started removing the accounts without warning. As on February 12, reports say nearly 97 per cent of the accounts were blocked by Twitter. 

The Modi government smartly compared the tweets put out by activists and supporters of the farmer agitations with the supremacists that campaigned for Donald Trump and whose protests ended up in storming the US legislature building. Juxtaposing the Capitol event with how the protesting farmers breached security to enter the Red Fort in Delhi on the Republic Day (January 16), the government was able to force Twitter expedite its action against the “provovative” users.  

Freedom of expression

On its part, the government believes the accounts it had sought a ban on having ties with forces in Pakistan and the Sikh separatist movement of Khalistan. Even though it had blocked hundreds of accounts, Twitter maintains that the ban would reflect only in India and the accounts can be accessed from other geographies, as its policy mandates. Twitter also said it would not block accounts of news media entities, journalists, activists and politicians. The platform felt such a move would go against the very idea of right to free expression guaranteed under India’s Constitution.

In its official response to the blocking orders from the Indian government, Twitter on 10 February, said that it believed “transparency is the foundation to promoting healthy public conversation on Twitter and to earn trust.” It, however, acknowledged that the “values that underpin the Open Internet and free expression are increasingly under threat around the world”. 

But not many seem to buy this, if discussions on Twitter are any reference. According to Apar Gupta, Executive Director, Internet Freedom Foundation, Twitter is a “significant forum for the ongoing adversarial contest for narrative control on the farm laws.” and the row is an example of how “an unconstitutional law is being applied to its maximum threshold.” Several experts have come out on social media and beyond expressing concern over the way legal provisions are misused by the government and how Twitter’s confused stance over privacy and freedom of speech, which most platforms including Facebook and Google share to a great extent, have given rise to such a crisis. 

Regulation and rights 

It is in this context that the Supreme Court move to issue notices to the Centre and Twitter India should be seen. On February 12, the country’s top court wanted to know if there existed a mechanism to regulate content and ads on social media that spreads fake news and incendiary messages via bogus accounts. How the government and Twitter India are going to respond to the court’s query is going to be interesting and can pave the way for another heated debate on censorship of social media content, a dicey area for policy. 

Why do such crises arise? Several social media experts and technologists feel that the fault lies with the very fundamentals of the medium itself. Social media algorithms are designed to be provocative and, hence, they encourage extreme views on the platforms. Clearly, this helps business. But evidently, this creates huge rifts among the engaging populations and, as a result, an avalanche of polarising content emerges and spreads faster than policy can control. 

This leads to blanket rules and blunt regulations that make a mockery of privacy rights and data security. For instance, many fear that the current controversy over Twitter and the way the SC has been seeking ways to control misinformation can lead to the emergence of one-size-fits-all rules that can damage democracy in more than one way. Policy pundits say that social media platforms must exercise a form of self restraint and use such crises as a wake up call to introspect their policies and rejig the algorithms that fan radical views. 

Also Read: 13 Books on Privacy, Data & Social Media You Must Read

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.