The bhakts hyperventilating over ‘foreign company blocking a minister’s right to free speech’ don’t realise that:
1. Twitter has an India office.
2. They didn’t block either @OfficeofRSP or @PIB_Law. R S Prasad as an individual is irrelevant and his personal views and opinions need not reflect the official Government of India stand. His personal Twitter handle is his personal megaphone enabled by Twitter’s reach and power. He does not have unfettered access to it by right.
3. You do not understand freedom of speech.
4. Twitter doesn’t give a shit even about the POTUS. Who are you?
5. How large an ego does RSP really have to conflate a slight (in all probability, automated and unintended) to his Twitter handle with an insult to the government and the people of India.
And lest this be misread, here’s what I think independent of this incident:
1. Twitter’s, Facebook’s, LinkedIn’s, and Instagram’s algos for blocking accounts over community standards, copyright, and general stupidity are a pile of shit. They need to take a long, hard look at them and do something about it.
2. Twitter and all the social media companies, including Google and Amazon, need to be reigned in and broken up before they take over the world. And this has nothing to do with them being domestic or foreign. You’d be rather surprised where these giants (claim to) pay taxes.
3. Twitter can posture but the bottom line is that if the court decides that the IT Law is not ultra vires, they’d better shape up or ship out. Like everything that is not indispensable, they’ll not be missed beyond a small period of mourning.
4. That said, the new IT Law is beyond stupid, naïve, and impractical. It doesn’t just not locate itself in 2021, it is generally off by about 30 years, and would have made more sense in the 1990s. And even then, some people would have laughed at the juvenile attempts to control the internet in a democracy.
5. The BJP, by creating and forcing into law of such legislation that allows the party at the centre to have unquestionable and complete access to all channels of outreach, at the cost of a free and fair democracy, is simply preparing a coffin for whichever party is in the opposition, without realising that they aren’t going to be in power permanently. No one has. No one can. Ever.
