The tweets Twitter blocked. Inexplicable, since several images have been published in mainstream media, reproduced and shared across multiple platforms. Censorship by the government or by pliant social media platforms won’t make these images, or the reality they depict, go away.
They’ve been compiled here and posted on Twitter too:
Sharing for the record.
Published on April 29, 2021
On April 22 and 23, the Indian Government ordered Twitter to block tweets relating to the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. To my knowledge, no media house has compiled and reproduced all such tweets together in one place. Tweets that were live as of April 28 are linked (still accessible outside India) and reproduced below.
A BJP spokesperson claimed, in an interview to BBC, that the tweets were part of a coordinated and malicious campaign, were spreading misinformation, and were found to be against “national interest.” Readers can be the judge of whether that claim holds any truth.
10. Link to tweet
11. Link to tweet
12. Link to tweet
13. Link to tweet
14. Link to tweet
15. Link to tweet
16. Link to tweet
17. Link to tweet
18. Link to tweet
19. Link to tweet
20. Link to tweet
21. Link to tweet
22. Link to tweet
23. Link to tweet
24. Link to tweet
25. Link to tweet
26. Link to tweet
27. Link to tweet
28. Link to tweet
29. Link to tweet
30. Link to tweet
31. Link to tweet
32. Link to tweet
33. Link to tweet
34. Link to tweet
35. Link to tweet
36. Link to tweet
37. Link to tweet
Note 1: While I believe Twitter should have not complied with all the government orders, it is commendable that they uploaded information about both orders to the Lumen Database (from which these links are sourced).
Note 2: I want this webpage to be accessible. Unfortunately, it’s currently not. If you have the time, please consider submitting a pull request to this page to add alt text and subtitles to all the images.
Note 3: India is currently facing an unprecedented crisis, with lakhs of (officially recorded) COVID-19 cases each day. If you can afford it, please consider supporting non-profits fundraising to provide medical supplies to those who need it the most. This up-to-date list by Mutual Aid India is a great start.
This post is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License: reproducing it is fine as long as you can link back to here.
