Delhi Police pays embarrassing visit to Twitter India office [what they found]

Two teams of Special Cell of Delhi Police visited the offices of Twitter India in Delhi's Lado Sarai and Gurugram on Monday evening to serve notice to its managing director in connection with an investigation into the social media giant's tagging a post by a BJP leader as "manipulated media".

The police visit came days after several senior leaders of the ruling BJP shared portions of a document on social media sites, which they said was created by Opposition Congress to portray the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in a bad light. 

According to police sources, the visit to the offices of Twitter India was necessitated to identify the right person who should be served notice in the matter. 

Police teams went to Twitter offices to serve a notice to Twitter, as a part of a routine process. This was necessitated as cops wanted to ascertain who is the right person to serve a notice, as replies by Twitter India MD have been very ambiguous," police sources said. 

Earlier in the day, the Delhi Police, in a statement, said that it had sought clarification from Twitter regarding the labelling of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet on the alleged Congress toolkit by the social media company. 

"Delhi Police is enquiring into a complaint in which clarification is sought from the Twitter regarding the classification of a tweet by Sambit Patra as 'manipulative'. It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it as such. The information is relevant to the inquiry. Special Cell, which is conducting the inquiry, wants to find out the truth. Twitter, which has claimed to know the underlying truth, should clarify," the Delhi Police said.

 As per its policy, Twitter classifies as "manipulated media" the posts that "include media (videos, audio, and images) that have been deceptively altered or fabricated".

Centre asks Twitter to remove 'manipulated media' tag from posts of BJP leaders

The Central government last week objected to Twitter tagging "manipulated media" tags to posts of BJP leaders and had asked the social media platform to remove them "in the interest of fairness and equity".

"Ministry has further stated that Twitter unilaterally chose to go ahead & designate certain tweets as 'Manipulated', pending investigation. This action not only dilutes the credibility of Twitter but also puts a question mark on the status of Twitter as an 'intermediary'," news agency ANI quoted sources in the Ministry of Electronics and IT as saying. 

Congress lodges police complaint, reaches out to Twitter

Twitter tagged some posts, including that of Patra, as "manipulated media" after Congress social media department wrote to the social media platform, demanding suspension of the accounts of the BJP leaders, who the party said, were "spreading forged documents attributing to Congress". 

The Opposition party had also lodged a formal police complaint with the Delhi Police against several BJP leaders who had tweeted the portion of the document. 

Police in Chhattisgarh, where Congress is in power, summoned Patra and former chief minister Raman Singh in the "toolkit" matter. 

Twitterati make fun of police visit to closed offices of Twitter

As the news of the Delhi Police Special Cell's visit to the Twitter offices came to light, social media users made jokes about the visit, pointing out that the offices are closed for more than a year as Twitter employees continue to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

They also took a swipe at the Delhi Police for its statement that its officers went to the Twitter offices to identify who is the right person to serve the notice to in the investigation. Some other users, including experts, came down heavily on the government for what they called "bullying" Twitter for not toe the line. 

"Have they arrested any tweets yet? Or detained any hashtags? Interrogated any algorithms? Dystopian times! Just because Twitter flagged Sambit Patra's tweet as #ManipulatedMedia, refused to remove the tag? Delhi Police at #TwitterIndiaOffice is terrible optics internationally," tweeted film-maker Rakesh Sharma. 

Another user, Ivan Mehta, pointed out that the notice could have been sent to Twitter through e-mail and Delhi Police could have saved its energy and time spent in the visit.