Hundreds of Twitter users started a mass exodus from the social media platform on a day when its third-quarter earnings revealed a major fall in revenues.
The impact of lower revenues led to a sharp 20% fall in share prices, as company officials struggled to explain what had gone wrong.
But the bad news for the social media platform did not end. In India, which hosts a large number of its users, people were beginning to sign off. It started with Twitter banning a prominent lawyer and designated senior advocate Sanjay Hegde from the platform.
He was banned because he had posted an iconic anti-Nazi image as his banner picture above his profile on the microblogging site.
Twitter’s filters failed to distinguish the image from the usual Nazi images and sent him a notice that he was in violation of the platform’s community standards.
When Hegde appealed his case, Twitter continued to maintain that the image he had posted as his banner image on his Twitter profile was unacceptable. When Hegde refused to take down the picture, Twitter deleted his account.
Free speech entanglement
But Hegde was not ready to accept Twitter’s decision. He sent them a legal notice and a separate representation to the union minister for Information Technology, who also happens to be a senior lawyer.
“Yes, I do plan to take them to court. The jurisdiction or the manner is to be decided later,” Hegde told Asia Times. “The image I had is a proverbial poster for resistance historically and globally. It shows how one person can stand up to majoritarianism.
“It seems Twitter’s filters saw this as an image of the Nazis and are refusing to accept what it really means,” he said.
Global News 
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