Indian-origin Parag Agrawal to replace Dorsey as Twitter CEO

• Indian-origin technology executive Parag Agrawal was appointed the new chief executive officer of Twitter after the social media giant’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down from CEO.
• Parag Agrawal has joined Twitter as distinguished software engineer in 2011 and became the chief technology officer in 2017.

Twitter (initially called Twttr)

• It is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as ""tweets"".
• Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year.
• By 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day.
• Founded: March 21, 2006; 15 years ago
• Headquarter: San Francisco, California, U.S.

Centre vs Twitter

• The Centre has issued notice to the micro-blogging site after it restored more than 250 accounts that had been suspended earlier on the government’s ‘legal demand’.
• The government wants the platform (Twitter) to comply with its earlier order of 31st January, 2021 by which it was asked to block accounts and a controversial hashtag that spoke of an impending ‘genocide’ of farmers for allegedly promoting misinformation about the protests, adversely affecting public order.
• The micro-blogging site reinstated the accounts and tweets on its own and later refused to go back on the decision, contending that it found no violation of its policy.

Law Related to Blocking of Internet Services/Content:

Information Technology Act, 2000:

• In India, the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, as amended from time to time, governs all activities related to the use of computer resources.
• It covers all ‘intermediaries’ who play a role in the use of computer resources and electronic records.
• The role of the intermediaries has been spelt out in separate rules framed for the purpose in 2011- The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011.

Section 69 of the IT Act:

• It confers on the Central and State governments the power to issue directions “to intercept, monitor or decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource”.
• The grounds on which these powers may be exercised are:

1. In the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state.
2. Friendly relations with foreign states.
3. Public order, or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to these.
4. For investigating any offence.