Thursday was a black (block) day for Twitter as the government cracked the whip on several websites and accounts in view of the hate campaign and subsequent exodus of North East people from various states. The buzzword #GOIblocks (stands for Government of India block) was trending on Twitter on Thursday.
The Twitter world criticised curbs on the social media by terming it as #Emergency 2012 and #blackday. Even two prominent journalists faced Internet censorship.
Union Home Secretary R K Singh said that Pakistan was behind the hate campaign. Soon, the government pressed the panic button and blocked more than 250 websites and social networking sites.
Blocked messages from Department of Telecom were received by several Twitter users, including prominent journalists such as Kanchan Gupta and Shiv Aroor.
Aroor, deputy editor of Headlines Today, tweeted on Thursday, “My Twitter ‘account’ isn’t blocked (yet?). But http://twitter.com/shivaroor on a browser shows a DoT “Blocked” msg”.
However, one of the ironic and funny facts of #GOIblock was that the government even blocked the post of Pakistani blogger Faraz Ahmed who first exposed how Islamist groups doctored photographs from Tibet and Southeast Asia to incite violence against the North East.
“They can block my Twitter, my FB, my Blog, my Email BUT They can NEVER EVER block my mind. #Emergency2012 #GOIBlocks #BlackDay” was the most re-tweeted message on Twitter in the past few days.
Some other interesting tweets are @rameshsrivats: I’ve always wondered what exactly a Block Development Officer does. Now I know.
#GOIBlocks, @madversity: Freedom of speech is a fundamental right, not a fundamentalist right. #GOIblocks.
Whatever be the reason, the block is expected to create more firestorms in the days to come.