Bad boy gone good? An armistice with the powers-that-be? Or an uneasy ceasefire? What explains the sudden lull in the Twitter versus Indian government storm after a season of vitriol?
Ostensibly, the claim is that the issue has been sorted ever since the blue birdie capitulated to the government's pressure on it to install compliance officers in the country who were to look into complaints and take action. The government stated as much when additional solicitor general Chetan Sharma told Delhi High Court last month that “chief compliance officer, nodal contact person and resident grievance officer have been appointed and they (Twitter) are today in compliance with the law.”
But is that all there is to it? Not quite.
In some ways, it was evident that the shrill rhetoric from the government's side would be toned down after the cabinet reshuffle in July, with high-profile IT minister and Twitter-baiter Ravi Shankar Prasad given the boot. Even one day before he lost his post, Prasad vs Twitter sounded like a high-voltage offensive, with the minister losing no opportunity to lambast the US social media firm with a vengeance, and the site itself shutting down Prasad's Twitter account temporarily, alleging a copyright violation over a video he had shared a few years ago.
But matters quietened down considerably once new incumbent Ashwani Vaishnaw took over. In his first public pronouncements, Vaishnaw did pay lip service to his predecessor (and senior party colleague) Prasad's witch-hunt, but then that was it. It was left to the courts to smoothly settle the issue by implementing the law in letter and spirit.
However, Twitter's sobered-up compliance with the law, at least for the time being (there are pleas in the Supreme Court by fellow social media giants Facebook questioning the validity of the new rules), is dramatically at variance from its belligerent we-will-protect-free-speech-come-what-may attitude till recently. While it did have a strained relationship with the ruling dispensation and was constantly targeted by right-wing trolls for its supposed liberal credentials, it took events emerging out of the farmers' agitation last winter to turn it into a full-on spat.
Even while tweets by international celebrities like pop star Rihanna and environmental activist Greta Thunberg riled the Indian government, it hit the roof when Twitter refused to censor content as per a government diktat. Following the January 26 tractor rallies, the government initially asked Twitter to block some 257 Twitter handles (Twitter did, but rolled back the ban after a few hours) and then, another 1,178 accounts. The American social media giant refused to kow-tow to its diktat, explaining that it stood for its users' right to free speech and that it removes content only after a ''properly scoped'' request from an authorised entity.
Matters quickly went downhill after that. The government waited for the three-month grace period for tech giants to fulfill the provisions of the new IT intermediaries rules to kick in before turning the heat on. While most of the other players were yet to comply, Twitter bore the brunt of the loss of third-party protection the lack of compliance envisaged, with cases filed against its India MD in multiple police stations in BJP-ruled UP as well as being questioned at the Delhi High Court. While Prasad may have lost his chair, his antagonism, and the writing on the wall all the multitude of cases against it awakened it – compliance officers were appointed and India MD Manish Maheshwari was quickly transferred out of the country.
So peace reigns in the desi Twitterverse again? Not quite. Twitter may have blinked as far as the intermediaries issue was concerned following government orders on objectionable tweets while the government may have removed the very vocal-for-local Prasad, but the microblogging site now finds a detractor from another corner – the opposition Congress party. Last month, it temporarily suspended the account of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, followed by that of many Congress party workers upon the request of the child rights commission that claimed that Gandhi's post of a minor rape victim's family broke privacy laws. A Congress party spokesperson called it “politically coloured'' and accused that Twitter was “completely subservient to the Modi government.” Well, guess you can't win ém all!