Twitter, controlled by Elon Musk, has disabled the accounts of multiple organisations for breaking the site’s “age standards.” On Saturday, the social media accounts of at least two widely recognised news organizations—Asian News International (ANI) and New Delhi Television (NDTV)—were disabled.
According to the notice by twitter, “In order to create a Twitter account you must be at least 13 years old. Twitter has determined that you dont meet these age requiremen., so your account has been locked and will be removed from Twitter.”
Smita Prakash, the editor of ANI, posted a tweet on Twitter saying,”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 – under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out. @elonmusk.”
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 – under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out. @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/sm8e765zr4
— Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) April 29, 2023
The blue tick (verified tick) for the news organisation was consequently deleted, and the page now displays “account does not exist.”
Since Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s ways to verify across the social media platform changed with the introduction of Twitter Blue services, ANI has approximately 7.6 million followers on its handle and was previously recognised on Twitter as an official organisation, carrying the golden tick.
The other handle for ANI, ani_digital, is still in use.
Editor Smita Prakash later tweeted that the organisation would be tweeting all news from its other verified handles, @ani_digital and @AHindinews, until Twitter reinstated the main ANI handle.
A few hours later, NDTV’s Twitter account was likewise locked and the same message stating that the “account does not exist” was displayed there.
According to Twitter’s terms of service, users must be 13 or older to open an account.
“You must be at least 13 years old, or in the case of Periscope 16 years old, to use the Services. If you are accepting these Terms and using the Services on behalf of a company, organization, government, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you are authorized to do so and have the authority to bind such entity to these Terms, in which case the words “you” and “your” as used in these Terms shall refer to such entity,” the social media’s policy states.
However, Twitter notes that some data will be permanently deleted after the account is restored:
● Tweets sent before the user turned 13.
●Likes the user made before turning 13.
●Direct messages sent and received before to the age of 13.
●All profile information other than your handle, birthday, who you follow, and who follows you will be deleted.
● User-saved Moments, Lists, and Collections.
Since Elon Musk, a billionaire, took control of Twitter, significant changes have been made. As Musk experiments with features, a number of issues have surfaced, with the most recent being the authenticity blue check mark.
