By Sankalp Phartiyal and Aditya Kalra
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India rebuked Twitter on Wednesday for failing to comply with its orders to remove certain content and warned the social media giant that it must comply with local laws, even with Indian lawmakers asking its followers to switch to a local rival Koo.
India has ordered Twitter to remove more than 1,100 accounts and posts it claims are spreading misinformation about widespread protests by Indian farmers against the new agricultural laws.
Twitter Inc angered the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday after saying in a public blog that it had not fully complied with the government order because it believed that some of the withdrawal orders were not consistent with Indian law.
“In accordance with our principles for the defense of protected expression and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action in relation to accounts consisting of media entities, journalists, activists and politicians,” he said.
India’s IT Ministry, through a post on rival platform Koo, said on Wednesday night that its top employee had received a call with some of Twitter’s top executives expressing “strong discontent” with Twitter’s actions.
“Twitter is free to formulate its own rules and guidelines,” said the government. “But the Indian laws that are enacted by the Parliament of India must be followed regardless of Twitter’s own rules and guidelines.”
The IT secretary expressed his deep disappointment at the way the company “grudgingly, reluctantly and long overdue” fulfilled only a few parts of government orders, the government statement added.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting with the IT ministry.
Twitter’s moves to defy India’s orders put the company and its executives at the center of a political storm. New Delhi had previously threatened legal action that could result in fines or imprisonment for Twitter executives responsible for implementing government policies.
It also comes after Twitter’s top lobbyist in India, Mahima Kaul, resigned as the company struggles to contain a growing public relations crisis.
Public opinion in one of Twitter’s main markets is divided. Some lawyers say Twitter must comply with or challenge the order in court, while activists blame the government for using legal devices to curb freedom of expression.
I’M ON KOO!
Earlier on Wednesday, Twitter said that, following government orders, it has permanently suspended more than 500 accounts for involvement in platform manipulation and spam. For many others, it restricts access only in India and its tweets can still be read abroad.
For Twitter, the stakes are high in India, where it had 17.5 million users last month, according to German database company Statista. It is also used enthusiastically by Modi, his cabinet ministers and other leaders to communicate with the public.
As the dispute affects Twitter, many Indian politicians and users are joining the home-grown Koo social media platform that launched last year.
#kooapp was Twitter’s main trend in India on Wednesday, with almost 21,000 posts, followed by #BanTwitter.
Twitter declined to comment on some users who are switching to Koo.
Several people on Twitter, including Trade Minister Piyush Goyal, posted tweets this week saying “Now I’m on Koo”. Goyal, who has 9.6 million followers on Twitter, has a tweet posted asking people to connect with him on the rival Indian platform.
Sambit Patra, a national spokesman for Modi’s ruling party, and his IT chief, Amit Malviya, also joined Koo on Wednesday.
Koo, who has a yellow bird as a logo, said downloads have increased 10-fold in the past two days, to more than 3 million.
“In the past 48 hours, there have been the largest number of applications,” Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka told Reuters. “I have slept for two hours in the past few days.”
(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal and Aditya Kalra; Editing by Euan Rocha, Edwina Gibbs, David Clarke and Jonathan Oatis)