Sushil Kumar Shinde

New Delhi, Aug. 24: Official pressure on social networking sites to block “objectionable” content and fake accounts mocking the government has led to an irony: a jittery Twitter today suspended minister Milind Deora’s official account too.

The US micro-blogging site has been on an overdrive to block any content that might give offence — and even tweets attracting public criticism.

It today blocked six “fake” accounts posing as official handles of the Prime Minister. When Deora’s account attracted public ire, it removed it from circulation too.

In a tweet yesterday, the junior technology minister had defended the government’s efforts to block hate content on the Internet.

“Ironically, let me clarify on Twitter that there is absolutely no intent of the government to curb freedom of social media platforms,” his tweet read. It attracted a lot of criticism overnight with people calling it a “lie”. One tweet said: “Words and actions don’t match.”

So Twitter, apparently fearful that the account may be a fake one in Deora’s name, suspended it. Deora has now clarified the account is “being verified hence temporarily suspended. Not blocked.”

Twitter did not say why it suspended Deora’s account. Tech experts said that if someone reports an account as “fake” or “offensive” using a social site’s “report violations” tool, the site often errs on the side of caution and suspends it till it can verify its credentials. The report violations tool is part of all social networking sites and can be accessed by any Web user.

The telecom ministry had earlier issued Twitter an ultimatum, threatening legal action and a blackout if it did not follow the Centre’s order of removing inflammatory content from around 28 accounts. There are over 16 million Twitter accounts in India.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) too had requested Twitter to act against six fake accounts. Twitter today wrote to the PMO: “We have removed the reported profiles from circulation due to violation of our Terms of Service regarding impersonation.”

It said it would seek additional information from the telecom ministry “to locate unlawful content and specific unlawful tweet”.

The telecom department blocked numerous web pages and Twitter accounts between August 18 and 21 over concerns that these were fanning communal tensions following the Assam violence.

The move has angered many Netizens, one tweet terming the blackout a “hopelessly hamhanded, completely clueless and ridiculously random attempt at shutting down channels of communication”.

Indians spend nearly one-fourth of their time online doing social networking, a report by digital business analytics firm ComScore has said.

Under flak for treating Twitter and Facebook accounts critical of the government on a par with communal web pages, the Centre went on the defensive today.

“We are only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours. We are not taking action against other accounts, be it on Facebook, Twitter or even SMSes,” home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said.

The government has even blocked some journalists’ accounts that have little to do with inflammatory comments. It seems to have unblocked some of these under public criticism.

“There is no censorship at all. We decided on taking action because there were pictures of Myanmar, etc, online, which were disturbing the atmosphere here in India,” Shinde claimed.

Even last year, the Internet world was in uproar over the government’s directive to social networking sites to censor and pre-screen content that offended religious sentiments or degraded individuals. Twitter had then blogged that it was ready to censor tweets if a country’s law required it.