Centre asks Twitter to remove ‘manipulated media’ tag after Sambit Patra row

The central government on Friday asked Twitter to remove the “manipulated media” tags for certain posts in the interest of fairness and equality, ANI reported quoting Ministry of Electronics, Information and Technology sources (MeitY). 

The Ministry has also said that Twitter unilaterally chose to designate certain tweets as “manipulated”, pending investigation. It said that such actions dilute the credibility of the San Fransico-based firm, as well as raising questions about its status as an “intermediary”, the ministry sources told ANI. 

This comes after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Sambit Patra’s tweet regarding an alleged “Congress toolkit” that the party prepared to discredit the Prime Minister Narendra Modi goverment and its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, was labelled as “manipulated media”.

Here is the tweet, which was first posted on May 18:

A number of other BJP leaders also shared the post.

The Congress filed a police complaint in the matter, and urged Twitter to remove the posts and permanently delete the BJP leaders’ account for “spreading misinformation and unrest in society”.

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According to Twitter’s “synthetic and manipulated media” policy, users “may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.

“In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context,” according to the micro-blogging platform.