Union Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said Twitter denied him access to his account for almost an hour today over complaints that he violated copyright law by posting clips of himself from television debates.
“Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account,” Mr Prasad said in a series of tweets.
“Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account,” he said.
“It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers,” Mr Prasad added.
His new run-in with Twitter comes amid its months-long clash with the BJP-led government at the centre over issues ranging from requests to take down tweets supporting the farmers’ protest, discrediting posts by leaders of the BJP and more recently new regulation.
