X bans record over 12 lakh accounts for policy violations in India in August

Elon Musk-run X Corp (formerly Twitter) banned a record 12,80,107 accounts in India between July 26 and August 25, mostly for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity. The micro-blogging platform, going through a churning under Musk who has recently appointed a new X CEO Linda Yaccarino, also took down 2,307 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country. In total, X banned 12,82,414 accounts in the reporting period in India.

X, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, said that it received 1,467 complaints from users in India in the same time frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms. In addition, X processed 78 grievances which were appealing account suspensions. “We overturned 10 of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation. The remaining reported accounts remain suspended,” said the company. “We received 10 requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period,” it added.

Most complaints from India were about abuse/harassment (1,267), followed by hateful conduct (62), child sexual exploitation (43), and privacy infringement (27). Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports. In the ‘June-July’ period, X Corp banned a record 23,95,495 accounts in the country. Between May 26 and June 25, X banned 5,44,473 accounts in India.

The micro-blogging platform also took down 1,772 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country. In addition, between June 26 and July 25, X banned 1,851,022 accounts and also took down 2,865 accounts for promoting terrorism on its platform in the country. Under Musk, X recently approved a staggering 83 percent of government requests to either restrict or block content globally, including in India and Turkey.

In other news, Bluesky, a rival platform to X, has announced it has crossed 1 million users. The decentralised social media platform was created as an alternative to Twitter (now X) after Elon Musk’s takeover. Musk introduced several changes to the platform, including reserving the blue tick only for paid users, removing the ability to block people, and putting most of the features behind the paywall. Irked by these changes, hundreds of thousands of users confirmed they were leaving Twitter and would like other platforms.

— Written with inputs from IANS