Delhi Police today said it only wanted to ask Twitter for any information the company had about the so-called manipulation of a ‘toolkit’ that was allegedly prepared by the main opposition party, Indian National Congress. It also accused Twitter of refusing to hand over “material evidence” about manipulation of the photographs contained in some BJP […]
The Indian government is all set to announce new rules that govern online and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Hotstar and Amazon Prime today, according to a report by financial news channel ET Now. The IT and Information & Broadcasting ministries will hold a combined press conference at 2 PM today to […]
An engineer from Kerala working with a petroleum company in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment and a fine of around Rs 30 lakhs for his tweets. With this, Vishnudev, a native of Alleppey in Kerala, has become the first Indian to be punished under Saudi Arabia’s stricter anti-blasphemy laws that […]
India’s Information Technology Department today unveiled a new plan of action to combat fake news that would require foreign social media firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google to establish offices in India and actively help in flagging and tracking down people who post troublesome messages online. Ravi Shankar Prasad also said WhatsApp, in particular, has […]
Facebook has emerged as the social media platform that has the highest degree of compliance with Government of India’s blocking requests, while Twitter and Instagram have the least. In all, the government issued blocking requests for 2,205 posts in 2017 and 2018 (up to June), out of which 74% were taken down by the concerned […]
Trinamool Congress MP Prasun Banerjee today raised the issue of the recent ‘trolling’ of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament. Over the last several days, Swaraj has come under attack on social media after she took disciplinary action against an official of the Lucknow Regional Passport Office for allegedly denying passports to a Hindu-Muslim […]
After years of debate, micro-blogging website Twitter is testing a higher word limit for some of its users, including some in India. Users, particularly active ones with large following, have been pleasantly surprised to see the limit of 140 characters relaxed as of today morning. “This is a small change, but a big move for […]
Smriti Irani, who recently took on the role of the union minister for information and broadcasting has started off with a bang by alleging that the country’s largest news wire distributed photo Chennai floods claiming them to be those of the floods in Gujarat. Unlike her predecessors, who would bring such matters to attention through […]
Facebook has made a strategic change in the way it facilitates brands, organizations and celebrities interact with their followers on the social network. It has started de-emphasizing ‘likes’ and instead promoting ‘follows’. Unlike competing platforms like Google Plus and Twitter, Facebook has, for years, allowed users to follow a brand or celebrity or organization’s updates only […]
Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal took to his account to protest the deletion of several AAP accounts after the social media company changed its anti-abuse algorithm. Three days ago, Twitter had said that it was putting in more safeguards against abuse and manipulation on its platform — a very widespread complaint. “This week we’re […]
For long, the Bharatiya Janata Party held the upper hand on Twitter — which — along with comment boards on news websites — forms the ‘wild west’ of political online campaigning in India with large-scale manipulation, ‘fake’ accounts, bullying and targeted attacks. Not to be outdone, the Aam Aadmi Party — or some of its […]
When I started using social media about 8-9 years ago, Facebook and Twitter were largely equal in their cool factor. In fact, while it was not obvious what Facebook was (a more intrusive form of Orkut, anyone?), the possibilities of Twitter seemed as limitless as the places where your ‘contacts’ lived. Over the next nine years, Facebook […]
India’s most iconic cricketer of recent times, Sachin Tendulkar, has crossed the 5 mln mark in terms of twitter followers. Sachin, who uses the handle @sachin_rt, will need another 3.6 lakh followers to equal the top Indian cricketer on Twitter, Virat Kohli. Third in line is MS Dhoni, who has 3.47 mln followers, while Virender Sehwag […]
Virat Kohli, captain of the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the most popular IPL player on Twitter with more than 3.15 million followers, secured his position at the top for a second week running in the most talked about IPL players,according to a compilation released by a public relations agency. Yuvraj Singh came rushing back into […]
