INDIA: Twitter has locked out one of India’s largest news agencies, Asian News International’s (ANI) handle, citing that the account holder is under 13 years of age and is not meeting the minimum age criteria to operate the social media platform.
The Twitter account of the news agency ANI shows the message, “This account doesn’t exist.”
ANI’s editor, Smita Prakash, shared a screenshot of a message received from the microblogging platform Twitter alerting that the ANI account @ANI had been locked.
“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,” reads the email from Twitter.
Minutes after ANI’s Twitter handle was suspended, Prakash tweeted, “So those who follow @ANI bad news, @Twitter has locked out India’s largest news agency, which has 7.6 million followers and sent this mail to anyone under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with a blue tick, and now we are locked out.”
ANI has confirmed that its other Twitter account, @ani_digital, is still operational. Until the main ANI handle is back up and running, the agency will continue to tweet all news from its other verified accounts. It is not clear at this time how long the suspension is going to last or what precise rule the news agency has violated.
A few hours later, on the same day, Twitter also suspended another news media outlet, NDTV’s official account. The news agency has seemingly not been given any explanation for their handle being locked.
NDTV has not yet made an official announcement about the account being locked, and the cause of this problem is yet unknown. The NDTV crew, however, posted on another account, saying they were working with Twitter to get their official account back.
When trying to visit the Twitter handle, it displays a message saying, “This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another.”
NDTV took to the microblogging platform to address the CEO of the social media platform, Elon Musk. NDTV said in a tweet that journalists had been running the account since 2009.
Also Read: Musk’s Changes Make ‘Legacy Blue Ticks’ Disappear from Twitter
