Last week quite a few right-wing Twitter users in India had their account suspended or restricted as they were violating guidelines, specifically for ‘promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm’.
Many Twitter users received emails from Twitter asking them to delete their tweets which had the phrase ‘kill me’ in them because, clearly, when someone says ‘kill me’, the person means it literally and not figuratively.
Interestingly, tweets which contained the word ‘kill’ were asked to be deleted by Twitter for ‘violation’ of general rules.
Considering some of these tweets date back to 2014, it is surprising Twitter woke up now, in 2018, to show concern to Divya and her alleged suicidal/murderous tendencies.
Twitter users suspect that these tweets are mass reported by people who searched these tweets with keywords and report them for self-harm because if this was automated, thousands of accounts would be blocked or restricted simultaneously.
It is not the first time right-wing Twitter users are targeted and their accounts suspended. Earlier, Twitter user Sonam Mahajan’s account and backup account both got suspended, following which, many right-wing Twitter users had reported attempts were being made to hack into their accounts. Prior to that also we had seen cases of right-leaning accounts getting suspended. Similarly, many accounts associated with ABVP, the students’ arm of RSS, were mass suspended, only to be reinstated after protests. Similarly, in 2016 many Twitter accounts were suspended after posting anti-AAP tweets.
