The microblogging site Twitter has removed tweets that were critical of India’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the request of the Indian government.
Twitter censored tweets from a member of parliament, an actor, a former journalist, and West Bengal’s minister of labor and law, according to Indian news outlet MediaNama, which first reported the news.
A Twitter spokesperson said in a statement that when it receives a valid legal request, it reviews it under both the Twitter Rules and local law.
“If the content violates Twitter’s Rules, the content will be removed from the service. In all cases, we notify the account holder directly so they’re aware that we’ve received a legal order pertaining to the account,” the company said in a statement.
