Hundreds of Indian Twitter accounts including those belonging to news websites, activists and actors were suspended for more than 12 hours on Monday after the government said users were posting content inciting violence.
The move came in the wake of weeks-long protests by Indian farmers against a new farm bill. The protests turned violent last week when riot police were sent in. One demonstrator was killed and hundreds of people were injured including police officers.
An Indian government official said the home affairs ministry had demanded the suspension of “close to 250 Twitter accounts” that were allegedly posting content seeking to foment violence.
If Twitter is indeed the public square – which to an extent it obviously is – then there should be some equivalent of the Riot Act, yes?
The problem with that being exactly the same as the Riot Act itself. Who gets to declare upon whom?
Twitter doesn’t have any magistrates on the payroll, does it?
Hope a lot of Plod got shitbashed. Getting sick of those scum worldwide.
Among the groups needing to be purged the BlueBottles are right up there. My “one day to have a go at the costumed thugs (so long as you don’t kill or cripple them for life)” is a good way to start off a series of reforms to bring the arrogant mugs back into Peelian bounds.
I was reading about this Tractor Party thing last week, Times of India I think.
I don’t know if this was some form of Indglish, but the article was talking about border control posts, between the states.
India has internal border controls?
That can’t be right, can it?
Ducky,
IIRC they had different sales taxes or something similar between stars and there were some controls. They were supposed to replace them all with a single GST but there was a lot of protest and I don’t how it ended. A quick DDG should help if you have the inclination.
They certainly have – or did have at least – different excise and sales taxes on state borders so, yes, economic border controls. People can move freely, not goods.
*between states*
Just has a look at Wiki and it looks like the GST came in to force in 2017 and it looks like its done its job:
Twitter suspends people for being non-Woke. They have no right to complain if the Indian government wants them to do anything. This is not a free speech issue but a who has power issue.
They certainly have – or did have at least – different excise and sales taxes on state borders so, yes, economic border controls. People can move freely, not goods.
One of the reasons for the 1943 Bengal famine was that surplus states, with elected Indian nationalist governments at this point, imposed export bans on food travelling to affected areas.
I haven’t read the detail of the Indian Farm Bill, but the Guardian seems very against it, so it must be good.
Many years ago I passed from Kerala into Tamil Nadu over the mountains. There was a landrover with about twenty indians sneaking their way into Tamil Nadu, so presumably there must also have been some people controls. ( 1990 – 30 years ago)