Suspended over 22,500 accounts: Twitter in 1st compliance report


New Delhi :
Micro-blogging platform Twitter filed its first grievance redressal report as required under India’s new IT norms, wherein the company said that it has suspended 22,564 accounts for “child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity” and “promotion of terrorism”.

It also said that it has acted against 133 posts over several reasons including harassment and privacy infringement.

The data pertains to the period of May 26, 2021 to June 25, 2021 that included content on Twitter. This includes complaints received from individual users with accompanying court orders, it said.

“We receive complaints in our Grievance Officer – India channel that relate to account verification, account access, or seeking assistance or information regarding an account or Twitter’s enforcement actions that are not included in the data below. The majority of complaints received in this channel during this reporting period fell into these categories,” the report said.

“In addition to the above data, we processed 56 grievances which were appealing Twitter account suspensions. These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent. We overturned 7 of the account suspensions based on the specifics of the situation, but the other accounts remain suspended.”

Further, Twitter has also appointed Vinay Prakash as its Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) for the country.

The micro-blogging site had informed the Delhi High Court last week that it will take eight weeks to appoint a resident grievance officer in compliance with the new IT rules.

Prakash comes with a public policy background and will work towards easing off the ongoing tensions between Twitter and the IT ministry, which now has a new minister in Ashwini Vaishnaw who made it clear on day one that Twitter has to follow the law of the land.

On its portal, Twitter has updated the grievance officer contact information for users in India, naming Prakash as its RGO and providing an email contact ID.