Twitter issues first response after removing Home Minister Amit Shah's profile photo

Issuing a response after removing the profile picture of Home Minister Amit Shah from his official handle, Twitter has said that the step was taken under their global copyright policies. The statement comes after Twitter faced backlash from Indian users with some even demanding the ban on the social media giant. Twitter spokesperson has said that the account of the Union Home Minister was locked because of "due to an inadvertent error." The statement also clarified that the decision was taken back "immediately" and account of Amit Shah is fully functional now, the profile photo has also been restored.

"Due to an inadvertent error, we temporarily locked this account under our global copyright policies. This decision was reversed immediately and the account is fully functional," the statement from Twitter said.

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On Thursday, Twitter had removed the display picture of Union Home Minister Amit Shah from his official handle. The message displayed in place of the profile picture read -  "Media not displayed. This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder." The image was restored later even as "Ban Twitter" started trending. According to ANI, there were no other details available from Twitter. Twitter's copyright policy states: "In general, the photographer and NOT the subject of a photograph is the actual rights holder of the resulting photograph."

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Twitter's action against copyright violation

A similar incident had also happened last week on Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s Twitter account. For more than a week, Twitter blocked his profile and banner photo of him citing copyright violations. A report stated that Dr Swamy’s lawyers and his secretary Jagdish Shetty contacted Twitter, warning of legal action, following which Twitter restored the photos again on Thursday evening. Twitter explained that they were acting based on a complaint from an unknown person from Bangladesh. Twitter had recently also removed the display picture on the official Twitter handle of BCCI, also citing copyright violation.

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