"Twitter said on Monday it was seeking talks with India's technology minister, days after the country asked the US social media giant to take down 1,178 accounts it says are spreading misinformation about ongoing farmers' protests," reported Reuters. "India's security agencies said some of the accounts were being operated from outside the country and were sharing and amplifying misinformation and provocative content on the farmers' protests, one of the tech ministry's sources told Reuters, declining to be named as the order was not public." "The government, in its notice to Twitter, stated that the hashtag #ModiPlanningFarmerGennocide was found to be instigating, encouraging people to commit offences and participating in aggravating the violence." "The 2011 Census showed English is the primary language - mother tongue - of 256,000 people, the second language of 83 million people, and the third language of another 46 million people, making it the second most widely spoken language after Hindi." "English speakers are very much India's elite", which means they are very unlikely to resort to street violence. Most likely, a case of not taking His name in vain. Twitter responded that "if the content was found to violate the platform's rules, it is completely removed, as was the case with Trump's twitter account. However, if the content does not violate the platform rules but the law of the land, it is blocked within the country, or a certain location only." According to a UK company Camparitech, "India leads the list of countries with the most-submitted takedown requests in the past decade. That's across multiple major platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Wikimedia." The government has threatened to arrest Twitter executives in India if its orders are not obeyed immediately. Very wisely Mahima Kaul who was Twitter's Director, Public Policy in India and South Asia resigned. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco in the US and employees in India cannot apply force on the management. So, our government is intending to use India employees as hostages to force Twitter to comply. That is dangerous, depraved and shameful. Orders for censorship are issued at whims of faceless officials and reasons are kept secret according to Article 69A of the Information Technology Act, wrote Anuj Srivas. Naturally, other Americans have joined in, with Meena Harris, niece of Vice President Kamala Harris being accused of being anti-Hindu and retorting that she is a Hindu and to "stop using religion as a cover for fascism". "The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) denies that journalists are being targeted and believes that much of what is happening is part of 'orchestrated propaganda' against the government." An "American digital forensics consulting firm found that 'fabricated' evidence was planted in the gadgets, including laptop and pen drive," seized from the house of activist Rona Wilson, reported the Washington Post. An online petition urging British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take up the farmers' agitation in the House of Commons has attracted thousands of signatures, including cross party politicians. Particularly galling would have been a phone call from Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reminding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "the two nations' commitment to democratic principles, recent protests, and the importance of resolving issues through dialogue", after Modi unnecessarily humiliated Trudeau during his trip to India in 2018 with family. Question is: Are we famous or notorious?
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