Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour: Ravi Shankar Prasad on Koo app

New Delhi, June 25: Twitter on Friday temporarily blocked IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's account for alleged violation of the US Copyright Act, a move that the minister slammed as being arbitrary and gross violation of IT rules.

Hitting out at Twitter, Prasad in a series of posts on another social media platform Koo said that Twitter''s action is in gross violation of IT rules, as the platform had failed to give prior notice before denying access to his account.

The account was subsequently unblocked after a warning

Confronting Twitter, Prasad said it was apparent that his statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of the microblogging platform, particularly sharing clips of interviews to TV channels and the powerful impact had "clearly ruffled its feathers".

''Twitter's actions were in gross violation of Rule 4 (8) of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account,'' he further said.

About an hour later, Twitter unlocked access to the account by posting a warning message to the minister's account stating, "Your account is now available for use. Plase be aware that any additional notices against your account may result in your account being locked again and poetentially suspended. In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorised to post."

Twitter has neither given any prior intimation before blocking access to account nor specified any content that was found violating the US laws on copyright.

The blocking of the IT Minister''s Twitter account comes at a time when the US digital giant has been engaged in a tussle with the Indian government over the new social media rules.

The government has slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country''s new IT rules, which has led to the microblogging platform losing its intermediary status in India and becoming liable for users posting any unlawful content.

Earlier this month, the Centre had issued a notice to Twitter giving it one last chance to "immediately" comply with the new IT rules and warned that failure to adhere to the norms will lead to the platform losing exemption from liability under the IT Act.