Twitter Removes BJP Politician T Raja Singh’s 3-Year-Old Tweet Citing Hateful Conduct Policy

Twitter has removed a tweet by BJP politician T Raja Singh that was posted in September 2017. In the tweet carrying a video, the BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Telangana urged Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and citizens of the country to deport Rohingya Muslim immigrants. The 42-year-old politician also used a hashtag #DeportRohingyaMuslims. He posted a similar message on Facebook that eventually pushed the social media giant to ban him permanently from the platform.

The tweet posted on September 12, 2017 by Singh is no longer available for access and is shown with a message saying it violated the Twitter rules. TechCrunch reports that the social network took the action after it was questioned about the three-year-old tweet.

“Twitter has zero-tolerance policies in place to address threats of violence, abuse and harassment, and hateful conduct. If we identify accounts that violate these rules, we'll take enforcement action. Upon investigation, the referenced Tweet was actioned for violating our policies,” a Twitter spokesperson told Gadgets 360.

Twitter added that under its Hateful Conduct Policy, it does not tolerate the abuse or harassment of people on the basis of religion, age, caste, disability or disease and take down content that is in violation of our Twitter Rules including dehumanising language. It recorded a 47 percent increase in the number of accounts actioned, as compared to the last reporting period, Twitter noted in its latest transparency report.

Singh was seen in the tweet encouraging his followers to share the message so that every “Hindu and [other] Indians” would see it. This was, however, not the first time when the politician made a questionable comment on social media. For a similar post, Facebook earlier this month had decided to ban him from its platform and Instagram.

“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson had said, while announcing the move against the controversial BJP leader.

However, Singh claimed on Twitter that he had not been using Facebook since April 2019 and thus the banning didn't make any difference.

Should the government explain why Chinese apps were banned? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.