New Delhi, June 28: After drawing flak over displaying a distorted map of India that showed Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as separate country, Twitter has now removed the wrong map.
The glaring distortion, which appeared on the career section of Twitter website under the header ‘Tweep Life’, had triggered a heavy backlash from netizens on Monday as they demanded strict action against the microblogging platform that has flouted various rules on multiple occasions in the past.
#TwitterBan was trending on Twitter with almost 17,000 tweets. This is not the first time that Twitter has misrepresented India’s map.
Earlier, it had shown Leh as part of China.
The global map, which grossly misrepresented India’s boundaries, was removed on late Monday evening by Twitter following social media outrage. Sources said the government is seriously looking into the matter.
In this case, since the wrong depiction is on Twitter’s website, the case is not that of an ‘intermediary’ but of a publisher which is responsible for content.
When something is clearly wrong it has to be tackled, or consequential action will follow, they said. Twitter — which has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India — has remained mum on the entire episode. Emails sent to the company did not elicit any response.
The US digital giant has been at loggerheads with the Indian government over the new social media rules. The government has confronted Twitter over deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country’s new IT rules, despite repeated reminders.
Notably, the microblogging platform has lost its legal shield as an intermediary in India, becoming liable for users posting any unlawful content.
In October last year, Twitter came under heavy criticism and faced backlash after its geotagging feature displayed “Jammu & Kashmir, People’s Republic of China” in a live broadcast from Leh’s Hall of Fame, a war memorial for fallen soldiers in the Union Territory of Ladakh.
India had issued a stern warning to Twitter that time, making it clear that any disrespect of the country’s sovereignty and integrity is totally unacceptable. (PTI)
