Indian news agency ANI, broadcaster NDTV say Twitter accounts suspended (updated)

New Delhi Television

29/04/2023 16:12

(Updates with details, background)
       April 29 (Reuters) - Indian broadcaster NDTV and the
country's ANI news agency both said on Saturday their main
Twitter accounts had been locked, without specifying a reason
for the suspensions.
    Searches on Twitter for NDTV's English service account @NDTV
and the @ANI handle both produced the message "This account
doesn't exist. Try searching for another." Their other accounts
appeared to be functional.
        ANI editor Smita Prakash tweeted a screenshot of the
news agency's handle being locked, with the message from Twitter
stating the account "did not meet the age requirements" to be on
the platform and would be removed. 
        NDTV's other account @ndtvindia tweeted their main
handle had been blocked, tagging Twitter CEO Elon Musk's
official handle, asking for the suspended account to be
restored. 
    The tweet said the main NDTV handle was India's
most-followed English-language news handle, while Prakash
reiterated that ANI's account had 7.6 million followers prior to
the suspensions. An immediate reason for the suspensions was not
clarified by either party.
    Several international media accounts, including U.S.-based
National Public Radio and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC) had stopped posting to their Twitter accounts earlier this
month after Twitter labelled them "Government-funded." The
labels were later dropped.
    Adani-owned NDTV is a listed company while ANI is private.
Neither are known to have any funding from the government.
    ANI did not respond to Reuters' calls for a comment. NDTV
and Twitter could not be immediately reached for a comment on
the suspensions.
    Twitter in January said accounts will only be suspended for
severe or ongoing and repeated violations of the platform's
policies, however assuring that such accounts would also be able
to appeal the suspensions.
    Earlier this week, Twitter said it received 53,000 legal
requests from governments during the first half of 2022 to
remove certain content from the platform, with India among the
countries submitting the most requests.


 (Reporting by Rahat Sandhu in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew
Heavens and Clelia Oziel)
 ((Rahat.Sandhu@thomsonreuters.com;))