A screenshot of a tweet purportedly made by the news agency ‘ANI’ is being shared on social media claiming that the ‘Twitter global communication’ team has decided to suspend its operations in India from 26 May 2021. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: ‘ANI’ made a tweet about Twitter stopping its operations in India from 26 May 2021.
Fact: The tweet was made from the fan page (parody) account of ‘ANI’ news agency. Neither Twitter officials nor the Government of India has announced the suspension of Twitter operations in India. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On searching for this tweet on the official Twitter handle of ‘ANI’ news agency, we could not find any such tweet reporting the suspension of Twitter operations in India. When we searched to check whether Twitter global communication team has made any official announcement regarding the suspension of Twitter India operations, it is found out that they did not make any such announcement.
The username (@ANINewsIndia) mentioned in the purported tweet is different from the official Twitter handle username (@ANI) of the ‘ANI’ news agency. When we searched for the Twitter account that posted this tweet, we could not find any Twitter handle with the username @ANINewsIndia.
‘The Print’ news website had published an article about this tweet being shared on social media. This article reported that a fake Twitter handle in the name of ‘ANI’ was spreading false news about Twitter suspending its operations in India. The parody Twitter handle was suspended after this fake tweet went viral on social media.
Twitter has been at the centre of a controversy after it labelled BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra’s tweet as ‘Manipulated media’. The Centre has asked Twitter to remove ‘Manipulated media’ tags on BJP leaders tweets about an alleged Congress tool kit. The Government of India has asked Twitter and other social media handles to strictly abide by the new intermediary guidelines introduced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, on 25 February 2021. Responding to this, Twitter has requested the Government of India to consider a minimum of three months extension for it to implement the new rules and also expressed concern about recent events regarding their employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people they serve. The Government of India termed Twitter’s statement as totally baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their own follies.
To sum it up, this tweet reporting the suspension of Twitter India operations is made from a parody account of ‘ANI’ news.
