Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu’s personal Twitter account lost its “blue tick” of verification on Saturday morning, only to have it restored later in the day after the matter was taken up by his office with officials of the social media platform, in a set of events that set off a spiral of such complaints by several senior members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) as well.
According to Twitter, Mr. Naidu now mainly tweets from his official account @VPSecretariat rather than his personal Twitter account @mvenkaiahnaidu.
Officials from the social media platform said this was the reason the blue tick of the account was removed. According to Twitter rules, accounts that are inactive, that is, not logging in for more than six months lose the badge or blue tick of verification.
“How does Twitter determine inactivity? It is based on logging in. To keep the account active, the account holder must make sure to log in at least once every six months,” said an official from the social media site.
While Mr. Naidu’s office got in touch with Twitter and got back the verification, it set off a social media flurry from RSS sympathisers that the Twitter handles of their senior leaders — RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, and senior office bearers like Suresh Soni, Krishna Gopal and Arun Kumar had also been divested of the blue tick of verification. RSS functionary Rajiv Tuli alleged that it “clearly shows biasness and a clear example of ‘tech feudalism’ by Twitter.”
The same reason of inactivity was cited for removing the verification ticks, but RSS functionaries said the verified accounts served to dispel any fake statements done in the same of their office bearers under fake Twitter handles.
“Some of our office bearers had lost the verification in March, 2021, and the matter was raised with Twitter to no avail. We only raised the issue publicly since the same had been done to Vice-President of India (M. Venkaiah Naidu),” said the source.
The verification had been restored to all accounts by Twitter by the later part of the day., but the RSS continued to fume over the attitude of the social media site.
