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| The Twitter accounts of 4 Pakistan Embassies in different countries have been banned by India, along with Pakistan’s national radio broadcaster |
New Delhi: Social media giant Twitter, on Monday, ‘withheld’ the Twitter handles of Pakistan embassies in UN, Turkey, Iran, and Egypt for their access in India. Twitter also withheld the account of Radio Pakistan, the national broadcaster of Pakistan. After Twitter in India banned these handles, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) urged the social media giant to restore access to the handles with immediate effect.
Twitter’s action in India comes at a time when the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B Ministry) blocked 16 YouTube channels, including six Pakistani channels for allegedly spreading anti-India content and spreading misinformation related to India’s national security.
Suspended anti-India YouTube channels had collective viewership of 68 crore
The I&B Ministry said that the handles were spreading ‘false, unverified information to create panic, incite communal disharmony, and disturb public order in India’. According to agency reports, the 10 Indian Youtube channels and six Pakistani channels had a collective viewership of 68 crore. They also reportedly violated the guidelines laid down by the government, as required under the IT Rules, 2021.
“YouTube channels based in Pakistan were found to have been used in a coordinated manner to post fake news about India on various subjects such as the Indian Army, Jammu, and Kashmir, and India’s foreign relations in the light of the situation in Ukraine among others,” the government said, news agency ANI reported.
India has vehemently slammed Pakistan for propagating fake propaganda against India on the world stage. even previously, several social media accounts were blocked/ suspended for spreading propaganda against India. Besides the claims by the Indian government, according to a report by Digital Forensics, Research, and Analytics Center (DFRAC), many Pakistani accounts were behind the hashtags that were running propaganda against many Indian institutions.
