Update: Twitter declined to comment on what determines trends and their ranking, and their response, as expected, is short enough to fit into a 140 character limit. "Twitter is a neutral platform, we aren't aligned with any particular party," a Twitter spokesperson informed us via email. Earlier today: Twitter's India Head, Rishi Jaitly, appears to be caught in a middle of a political debate: the neutrality of the platform is now being questioned, Jaitly is being criticised, and his tweets are being scrutinized for political leaning. Niti Central, a right leaning website backed by Netcore founder Rajesh Jain, has published an article with a sampling of Jaitly's tweets, including those where he asks his followers to watch a Rahul Gandhi speech, asks a Congress spokesperson to follow him, so he may DM (direct message) her. In particular, they have questioned the neutrality of the platform, since a hashtag apparently promoted by the Congress part #fekuexpress, trended higher than #NaMoInHyd on a day that the BJP's Narendra Modi addressed in Hyderabad, by citing data which indicates that there were more tweets for #NaMoInHyd than #fekuexpress. The Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy has this to say: Beware that Twitter in India has a boss who attends meeting in Congress offices — Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) August 23, 2013 Rishi Jaitly of twitter india sharing about #TWITTER @ #INCNationalWorkshopOnSocialMedia pic.twitter.com/0WTUUHzYtc — Dilip Chalil (@chalil) August 22, 2013 Storm in a tea-cup, you might say, but I do think that Twitter needs to respond…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...