Twitter locks the accounts of ANI, NDTV

Social media platform Twitter has locked the account of leading Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI), stating that it does not meet the minimum age criteria to operate the micro-blogging platform.

"In order to create a Twitter account, you must be at least 13 years old. Twitter has determined that you don't meet these age requirements, so your account has been locked and will be removed from Twitter," the mail from Twitter read, as per Smita Prakash of ANI.

She also tweeted, "So those who follow @ANI bad news, @Twitter has locked out India's largest news agency which has 7.6 million followers and sent this mail - under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out."

A user slammed Twitter for blocking the account of the news agency. "Absurd decision by @twitter. Such arbitrary action against a news agency is bound to invite tough regulatory response," he said.

"What is going on, @elonmusk? The largest news agency handle in India has been suspended for some bizarre reason! please @Twitter, @TwitterIndia see this is serious issue please restore @Ani_News, [sic]" another user said.

The third user said, "This is ridiculous. Since whimsical @elonmusk wants changes many times in a day, thereby causing hoards of glitches, the engineers didn't perhaps didn't get time to even create a proper portal referred to here https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/verified-organizations Why can't an organisation be say 5 years old?"

According to the ANI website, it has 100 bureaus across the globe.

Meanwhile, the Twitter handle of leading television channel NDTV is not working. However, the channel said that it is working to restore its account.

"We are working with Twitter to restore @ndtv account. Please follow @ndtvfeed for news alerts and updates," the account of NDTV News feed read.