Police in India’s capital have served a notice at Twitter’s offices, seeking information for a complaint about why a tweet by the spokesman of the ruling Hindu nationalist party was tagged as “manipulated media”.
Leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last week shared portions of a document on Twitter they said was created by the main opposition Congress and highlighted government failures in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congress complained to Twitter saying the document was fake, after which the United States’s company marked some of the posts – including one by BJP spokesman Sambit Patra – as “manipulated media”.
New Delhi police late on Monday said they had received a complaint about the classification of Patra’s tweet, which it was investigating, adding that a team of officials visited a Twitter office to serve notice of the inquiry.
“This was necessary as we wanted to ascertain who is the right person to serve a notice (to), as replies by Twitter India MD have been very ambiguous,” a police statement said, referring to the company’s managing director.
Twitter says it applies its “manipulated media” tag to posts “that include media (videos, audio, and images) that have been deceptively altered or fabricated”.
A leading fact-check organisation, AltNews, said it had analysed the documents and claimed that some were created with a forged letterhead.
Twitter declined to comment on the matter. (Aljazeera)