Hen companies xercise control
E Congress and the government have been onsistent on Twitter. Evolve a consensus
o understand the controversy around Twitter’s decision to lock Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s account — he had posted a picture which revealed the identity of tives of a minor rape victim, an offence under ian law — it is important to go back to first ciples. As this newspaper has consistently ued, Twitter is not an intermediary. It is a media pany. Like other social media companies such acebook, by projecting itself as an intermediary, tter sought to distance itself from any content ted on the platform. But this was never a tenable ition, for it sought to monopolise the benefits of ng a media company while seeking to escape the l obligations that came with it. In recent times, tter — using a range of tools — began exercising trol over tweets. This made it even clearer that platform was not just a platform; it was a media pany which exercised judgment over what was lly allowed and what was not, what was nipulated and factually incorrect information what was not, what constitutes hate speech and at does not. There were some who applauded tter’s editorial decisions and some who iqued it, but the bottomline was this — the tence of being an intermediary was over. his is where the politics comes in. In India, both government and its critics found the platform a ful tool to communicate messages. As Twitter an to flag legal and factual issues vis-a-vis the ets of government ministers and ruling party kespersons (for instance, Sambit Patra’s tweet an alleged Congress “toolkit” was flagged as nipu-lated media), the Congress celebrated, ing on the social media company to persist with pproach. The situation is now the reverse. As tter cracked down on Mr Gandhi’s account (and usands of other Congress accounts which osted the same picture revealing the identity of ily members of the victim), the government is ling and Mr Gandhi is accusing a foreign pany of interfering in Indian politics and ocracy. dia’s political class must evolve a broad mework consensually on social media panies. Hold them legally liable, just as nstream media organisations are liable for their tent, but preserve free speech. The government the Opposition need to learn that complaining ut each decision of a foreign company won’t p when they are willing to use the same
pany to score points against each other.