On December 12 (local time), Bari Weiss, Editor of The Free Press, published the fifth instalment of ‘Twitter Files‘ explaining how former President Donald Trump was de-platformed from Twitter. While giving examples of leaders from around the world that did not get banned from the platform even after instigating people, Weiss tried to insinuate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of them.
In a tweet, she wrote, “In early February 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government threatened to arrest Twitter employees in India and to incarcerate them for up to seven years after they restored hundreds of accounts that had been critical of him. Twitter did not ban Modi.” The tweet by Weiss was not only misleading but also quoted New York Times as “proof” despite the fact that the publication has been a repeat offender sharing fake news.
February 10, 2021, New York Times published a report titled “Twitter Blocks Accounts in India as Modi Pressures Social Media”. In the sub-heading, the report said, “The platform’s problems in the country offer a stark example of the difficulty of adhering to its free-speech principles amid government worries over its influence.” This is what was shared by Weiss. No information on where this report came from, no information on the background and no information on why the Government of India suggested that Twitter employees might face arrest. Let’s take a journey back to that period to understand what had happened.
Interestingly, if we go...
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