Amul’s Twitter account blocked briefly, social media firm cites ‘security processes’

This came a day after Amul put out a cartoon supporting the boycott of Chinese products. However, Twitter did not link the account’s suspension to it.

Amul’s Twitter account was briefly blocked on June 4 and restored the next day, PTI reported on Saturday. Twitter said the account was restricted after it got caught in the company’s security processes.

The Amul brand of food products is made by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation. Amul’s account was blocked a day after it had posted an “Exit the dragon?” cartoon on June 3. In the cartoon, the brand’s iconic girl is seen fighting a dragon, which is carrying a “Made in China” postcard. There is also a mention of TikTok, a Chinese application used to make videos. The brand’s creative tagline reads, “Amul, Made in India”, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for an “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, which roughly translates to self-reliant India.

However, Twitter did not link the account’s suspension to the advertisement. “Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult [or costly] for spammy or malicious account owners to complete.”

The statement added that once the account clears this security process, the account regains full access. “To protect the accounts, we routinely require them to clear this security key for login verification.”

Amul Managing Director RS Sodhi said the Twitter account was blocked on the night of June 4, and restored the next morning on June 5, when they took up process of reactivation with the social media firm. “We have asked Twitter why it blocked our account,” Sodhi said. “We are waiting for the reply.”