It seems that the Opposition campaign for 2024 Lok Sabha elections has officially kicked off as micro-blogging platform Twitter, fresh from helping the Democrats win the US Presidency has officially joined the Indian opposition camp after it flagged a tweet of BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya as ‘manipulated’.
In the clearest signal yet that Twitter is planning to meddle in Indian electoral process, the platform labelled Malviya’s tweet on the ongoing farmers’ protests as ‘manipulated media’. Malviya was responding to a tweet by Congress scion Rahul Gandhi with the former sharing a video clip labelling it as “reality”, which showed the policeman’s baton not touching the farmer.
Twitter found the video which Malviya tweeted as ‘clipped’ based on ‘fact-hacking’ websites like Alt News and Boom live. The aforementioned websites are nothing but propaganda websites with Alt News and their founders, in particular, being caught spreading fake news on multiple occasions. The fact that Twitter is heavily relying on left-liberal propaganda websites to assuage the authenticity of news is concerning and doesn’t bode well for India’s democratic process which till date had little or no interference from social media platforms like Twitter.
Rahul Gandhi must be the most discredited opposition leader India has seen in a long long time. https://t.co/9wQeNE5xAP pic.twitter.com/b4HjXTHPSx
— Amit Malviya (मोदी का परिवार) (@amitmalviya) November 28, 2020
It is no secret that organisations like Twitter are under the heavy influence of the leftists which perhaps explains how Twitter in a gross violation of India’s sovereignty showcased Jammu and Kashmir as a part of the People’s Republic of China.
Read More: According to Twitter, Jammu and Kashmir is a part of China
If the US elections are anything to go by, the Right side of politics across the world stands to face a daunting task to jointly fight the left-liberals and Twitter during the elections. Twitter picked up a fight with President Trump and almost every tweet by the POTUS was running with a disclaimer or restricted from viewing.
What’s worse is that Twitter restricted American publication New York Post’s story on corruption allegations against Hunter Biden – the son of President-elect Joe Biden. It was only after sustained pressure from the Republic Senators especially Ted Cruz did the platform finally relent. Unsurprisingly, the Democrat campaign didn’t have to worry about Twitter restricting their tweets not that the Democrats ran a holier than thou campaign without an iota of misinformation.
If the US Elections are anything to go by, the Indian government must actively work to ensure that Twitter isn’t allowed to meddle with the Indian electoral process. It must be the Indian electorate which decides the fate of our great country and not some IT professional operating out of Silicon Valley.