India blocked eight YouTube news channels, including one from Pakistan, and one Facebook account in August for posting “fake, anti-India content” online.
The official Twitter account of the Pakistani government has reportedly been blocked in India. When someone tries to access the Pakistan government’s Twitter account, it says, “Account Withheld @GovtofPakistan’s account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand,” according to ANI.
According to reports, this is the third time Pakistan’s Twitter account has been blocked from being viewed in India. Earlier in October 2022, the Pakistani government’s Twitter account was blocked in India.
Official Twitter account of Pakistani government was also blocked in India earlier in July, but it had since been reactivated and was visible. Twitter guidelines state that such action is taken in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order.
The Pakistan government’s Twitter feed, “@GovtofPakistan,” is currently inaccessible to Indian users. In June last year, Twitter in India banned official accounts of Pakistan embassies at the United Nations and in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt. India blocked eight YouTube news channels, including one from Pakistan, and one Facebook account in August for posting “fake, anti-India content” online.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the action was taken by imposing emergency powers under the Information Technology Rules, 2021. The blocked Indian YouTube channels were found to be using fake and sensational thumbnails, images of news anchors, and logos of certain TV news channels to mislead viewers into believing the news was genuine.
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by the American company Twitter, Inc., in which users post or reply to “tweets,” which are text, image, or video messages. Registered users can tweet, like, ‘retweet,’ and direct message (DM), whereas unregistered users can only view public tweets. Twitter is accessed by users through browser or mobile frontend software, or programmatically via its APIs.