NEW DELHI: Elon Musks’ Twitter is on a spree to suspend handles belonging to news agencies. On Saturday authorities blocked Twitter handles of news agency ANI and NDTV.
Blocking ANI the platform cited a violation of the age requirement. After the official page of ANI accessed by a few followers read- the account doesn’t exist, ANI Editor Smita Prakash from her personal account informed the handle was blocked for not having met the minimum age requirement to operate on the microblogging site. The Pan India news agency confirmed receiving a mail from Twitter mentioning its age bar violation.
The mail read: “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.”
In a Twitter, Smita Prakash said, “@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.”
In regards to tweeting news, Smita said, ANI would share news from its other handles until the issue was resolved.
Subsequently, NDTV also reported a similar blocking, for which reasons are yet to be ascertained. Sharing updates on the suspension, NDTV from its other handles took to Twitter mentioning the issue was being discussed and its users could follow @ndtvfeed on Twitter for news alerts and updates.