Govt to Twitter: 'Manipulated' tag on Sambit Patra's Toolkit tweet dilutes your credibility
According to media reports, which cited Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) sources, strong communication was sent to Twitter objecting to the use of the 'manipulated media' tags on certain tweets by Indian politicians and asked the social media company to remove them in the interests of fairness and equity.
FollowTwitter's decision to label BJP leader Sambit Patra's posts on the micro-blogging site as 'manipulated media' has reportedly prompted the Centre to shoot off a strong missive to the platform.
According to media reports, which cited Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) sources, strong communication was sent to Twitter objecting to the use of the 'manipulated media' tags on certain tweets by Indian politicians and asked the social media company to remove them in the interests of fairness and equity.
Twitter flagged BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet on the alleged Congress toolkit as manipulated media.
Sambit Patra had on Tuesday shared screenshots of what he claimed were pages of the Congress party's "toolkit" aimed at defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi and targeting the country's Coronavirus fightback. He also alleged that the toolkit was aimed at building a biased narrative of the Indian government's handling of the second wave of Covid-19 and the Central Vista Project.
The Twitter action is likely a result of the complaint filed by the Congress party, which claimed that that the document was fabricated.
Government sources, however, said that Twitter unilaterally chose to go ahead and designate certain tweets as 'manipulated', pending investigation.Â
The action not only dilutes the credibility of Twitter but also puts a question mark on the status of Twitter as an 'intermediary', MeitY sources added.
The Twitter policy says, "In order for a content to be labelled, we must have reason to believe that media, or the context in which media are presented, are significantly and deceptively altered or manipulated. Synthetic and manipulated media take many different forms and people can employ a wide range of technologies to produce these media."Â
"We also consider whether the context in which media are shared could result in confusion or misunderstanding or suggests a deliberate intent to deceive people about the nature or origin of the content, for example by falsely claiming that it depicts reality. We assess the context provided alongside media to see whether it makes clear that the media have been altered or fabricated."
Twitter is yet to come out with a clarification, and Sambit's 'toolkit' tweets continue to bear the 'manipulated media' tag.
