“Not a surprise. But terrifying nonetheless.”
That’s how Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein responded Sunday to news that India had requested and Twitter had agreed to have numerous tweets critical of the Modi government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic blocked from the popular social media platform.
The Indian news outlet
Buzzfeed in U.S. press. According to
Medianama’s reporting by Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru:
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.