Govt comes down heavily on Twitter

Says lawfully passed orders binding on any business

The government expects Twitter to fully comply with its legal notice in the matter of taking down accounts that were tweeting “incendiary” hashtags related to the ongoing farmers’ protests. After a marathon meeting of top Twitter executives with officials in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) on Wednesday, the government, in a strongly worded statement, said that “lawfully passed orders are binding on any business entity”.

Meity Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney, while stating that Twitter was welcome to do business in India, expressed strong displeasure to the executives of the American firm over the way it acted after an emergency order was issued to remove the genociderelated hashtag, according to the statement. ‘’Misuse of Twitter’s platform for execution of such campaigns designed to create disharmony and unrest in India is unacceptable and Twitter must take strong action against such well-coordinated campaigns against India,’’ it added.

The Twitter leadership affirmed its commitment to follow Indian law, the statement said. Earlier, Twitter had, in a blog post, said it was exploring options under Indian law.

The government had asked Twitter to take down content with the hashtag #Modiplanningfarmergenocide.

Meity gave Twitter blocking orders under Section 69A of the IT Act. “After we communicated this to Meity, we were served with a non-compliance notice,” the blog post by Twitter Safety said.

The blog further added: “Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law, and, in keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians. To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free

expression under Indian law. We informed Meity of our enforcement actions today, February 10, 2021. We will continue to maintain dialogue with the Indian government and respectfully engage with them,” Twitter said.

A senior Meity official said: “While we are extremely respectful of freedom of expression and love tools and technology that enable free expression ... disrespecting democratic values in India and infringing the law in the name of some rules that are drafted by a commercial enterprise (are) crossing the line.”

The official added a private entity’s own rules could not be above the law of the land.

Takedown notices were also sent to other social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube but they complied with the requests, the official said. Twitter further said it had taken steps to reduce the visibility of the hashtags containing harmful content. The measures included prohibiting them from trending on Twitter and appearing as recommended search terms.

“We took a range of enforcement actions — including permanent suspension in certain cases — against more than 500 accounts escalated across all Meity orders for clear violations of Twitter’s rules,” the blog stated.

It further said it had withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders under its Country Withheld Content Policy, preventing the content from being visible in India only. These will be visible outside the country.

Twitter permanently suspended the account of Donald Trump in his last days as US president after it was alleged that his tweets resulted in riots inside the US seat of its legislative branch the Capitol Building in January this year.

On January 26 in Delhi, a Sikh religious flag was raised at the Red Fort as part of the ongoing farmers’ protests, largely led by Sikh farmers.

“The situation was almost similar to Capitol Hill (riots) ... In the case of Capitol Hill, do you stand in a different place and in the case of the Red Fort do you stand in a different place?” questioned the government official, alluding to Twitter’s content takedown policies. Twitter said in its blog that beginning “26 January

2021, its global team provided 24/7 coverage and took enforcement action judiciously and impartially on content, trends, tweets, and accounts that were in violation of the Twitter Rules”. As a fallout of these, some ministers and Meity have moved to an Indian Twitter alternative called Koo, and have also urged people to get on the platform.

In response to the blog, Meity put out an interim statement on its account on Koo: “Upon the request of Twitter seeking a meeting with the Govt., the Secretary IT was to engage with senior management of Twitter. In this light a blog post published prior to this engagement is unusual. The government will share its response soon,” it said.

Year 2020 changed our relationship with money, and people, it seems, now trust robots more than themselves to manage their finances, according to a new study by Oracle and personal finance expert Farnoosh Torabi.

The study of more than 9,000 consumers and business leaders across 14 countries, including India, found that the Covid-19 pandemic has increased financial anxiety, sadness, and fear among people around the world. It has changed who and what we trust to manage our finances. It is reshaping the role and focus areas of corporate finance teams and personal financial advisors.

Among business leaders worldwide, financial anxiety and stress increased by 186 per cent and sadness grew by 116 per cent. And globally, consumer financial anxiety and stress doubled and sadness increased by 70 per cent. In India,106 per cent of business leaders saw an increase in financial anxiety and stress, and their sadness grew by 47 per cent.

“Financial anxiety and sadness among consumers and business leaders has more than doubled in 2020. What is shocking from an India perspective is that this has nearly quadrupled,” said Guruprasad Gaonkar, global Saas go-to-market leader, cloud business group, Oracle.

Worldwide, 90 per cent of business leaders are worried about the impact of the pandemic on their organisation. The most common concerns were a slow economic recovery or recession (51 per cent), budget cuts (38 per cent), and bankruptcy (27 per cent). Among Indian business leaders, 95 per cent are worried about the impact of the pandemic. The slow economic recovery or recession (59 per cent), budget cuts (49 per cent) and bankruptcy (29 per cent) were their main concerns.

Globally, 87 per cent of consumers are experiencing financial fears, including job loss (39 per cent), losing savings (38 per cent), and never getting out of debt (26 per cent). Amongst Indian consumers, 90 per cent are experiencing financial fears, including job loss (34 per cent), losing savings (47 per cent), and never getting out of debt (21 per cent).

These concerns are keeping people up at night: 41 per cent of global consumers reported losing sleep due to their personal finances. In India, that number rose to 59 per cent.

“When we dig deeper into the research, it tells us that every 1 in 3 employees at work is stressed,” said Gaonkar. “This is resulting in reduced employee productivity and also leading to inaccurate reporting from a financial perspective due to which we have seen having huge implications in various corporate frauds in recent Indian history.”

To help navigate financial complexity, consumers and business leaders increasingly trust technology over people to help: 67 per cent of consumers and business leaders globally trust a robot more than a human to manage finances. In India, 83 per cent of consumers and business leaders share this belief.

“The brightest spot of the research is that the whole impact of Covid-19 has placed India among the top three geographies globally, alongside Japan and China, where consumers and business leaders have declared that they trust AI more than humans to manage finance,” said Gaonkar.

Globally, 89 per cent of business leaders believe that robots can improve their work by detecting fraud (34 per cent), creating invoices (25 per cent), and conducting cost or benefit analysis (23 per cent). Almost every Indian business leader (96 per cent) believes that robots can improve their work by detecting fraud (37 per cent), creating invoices (32 per cent), and conducting cost or benefit analysis (30 per cent).

Globally, 53 per cent of consumers trust a robot more than themselves to manage finances; 63 per cent trust robots over personal financial advisors. The percentage for Indian consumers is 72 per cent and 82 per cent, respectively.

Among consumers, globally, 66 per cent believe robots can help with managing finances by assisting to detect fraud (33 per cent), helping to reduce spending (22 per cent), and making stock market investments (15 per cent). That number amongst Indian consumers is a bit higher, with 85 per cent believing robots can help with managing finances by assisting to detect fraud (45 per cent), helping to reduce spending (34 per cent), and making stock market investments (24 per cent).

Worldwide, 56 per cent of business leaders believe robots will replace corporate finance professionals in the next five years. And India, 67 per cent believe the same.

The events of the year gone by have clearly increased the need for organisations to rethink how they use artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies to manage financial processes.

The brightest spot of the study is that the whole impact of Covid-19 has placed India among the top three geographies globally, said Guruprasad Gaonkar of Oracle