Twitter has blocked the popular Indian newswire agency Asian News International (ANI) for being “under thirteen years of age”. Smita Prakash, the editor of the newswire agency, revealed this ban on her Twitter account. She shared a screenshot from the email that Twitter sent, which stated the account had been blocked because it was “under 13”.
ANI’s account on Twitter had 7,6 million followers. This made it India’s biggest news agency. Prakash expressed disappointment and concern about the matter. She stated that the gold tick on the account was removed and replaced by a blue check before it was completely locked out. She mentioned that Elon Musk’s account was also blocked.
Twitter sent ANI an email informing them that their account was locked because they did not meet Twitter’s age requirement of 13 years to create a Twitter Account. The email stated that the account will be removed from Twitter.
Smita Prakash, ANI’s editor, took to Twitter to let users know about the incident. She also appealed to Twitter to restore the handle of the new agency. Twitter has blocked India’s biggest news agency, ANI. It has 7.6 millions followers. They sent this message to anyone under the age of 13! “Our gold tick has been taken away and replaced with a blue tick, now we are locked out,” she wrote on Twitter.
Please restore the ANI handle on Twitter. “We are not under the age of 13!” Prakash made another appeal in a tweet.
Twitter restored this handle a few hours later.
The Twitter account of ANI appears to be working now. The news agency apologized for the inconvenience caused by the temporary outage.
