Silent protest against Twitter for ‘favouring’ leftist viewpoints; protest trends on Twitter

New Delhi, Feb 4: Members of Youth for Social Media Democracy (YSMD) on Sunday (Feb 3) organised a protest against microblogging site Twitter accusing it of trying to curtail free speech instead of encouraging it.

The outfit came out with a press release alleging social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have over the past few months "systematically" tried to curb free speech of individuals who subscribe to non-left-wing ideology by suspending their handles, "restricting their reach ad removing trends from the trends list".

"However, it has been ignoring offensive, abusing and threatening tweets from left leaning ideologues and senior leaders of the Congress," it said.

The YSMD is known for harbouring right-of-centre ideology.

The outfit further said that the act of "selectively" authenticating Twitter handles of leftist propagandists has legitimised them even after they have been caught doing the job of spreading fake news. According to YSMD, it showed the Twitter was not serious enough to tackle fake news.

The protest that the outfit members conducted on Sunday was a silent one and it happened from Delhi's Saket to Lado Sarai, where the regional office of the social media website is located. The protesters said they did not want to hold it on a week day that would disrupt the traffic movement.

Twitter faced similar experience in US also.

Twitter faced a similar situation in the US in September last year when the Republicans accused it of acting in favour of the Democrats. They even lashed out at Twitter's global CEO Jack Dorsey saying the platform's algorithms worked against conservative viewpoints.

Dorsey also faced a similar backlash in India when he was seen holding a placard reading "Smash Brahminical Patriarchy" which was seen as spreading hate-mongering against the uppermost caste in India.

The protest was trending on Twitter under the hashtag #ProtestAgainstTwitter.