Twitter briefly locks news agency ANI's account for being below 13 years of age; now restored

(Photo: Twitter)

Twitter on April 29 locked one of India's biggest news agencies ANI's handle, quoting that the account is less than 13 years of age and has "violated Twitter rules."

"In order to create a Twitter account you must be at least 13 years old. Twitter has determined that you dont meet these age requiremen., so your account has been locked and will be removed from Twiner," read the notice by Twitter.

However, hours later, Twitter restored the handle.

"ANI’s Twitter account appears to be functioning now. Inconvenience regretted for the temporary outage," the news agency tweeted from its now-restored handle.

Taking to Twitter, ANI editor Smita Prakash tweeted, "So those who follow @ANI bad news, @Twitter has locked out India’s largest news agency which has 7.6 million followers and sent this mail - under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out. @elonmusk."

So those who follow @ANI bad news, @Twitter has locked out India’s largest news agency which has 7.6 million followers and sent this mail - under 13 years of age! Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out. @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/sm8e765zr4

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— Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) April 29, 2023

Consequently, the news agency's blue tick  (verified tick) was also removed and the page now shows as "account does not exist".

ANI has around 7.6 million followers on its handle and was earlier recognised on Twitter as an official organisation, carrying the golden tick since Twitter's CEO Elon Musk's verification techniques across the social media platform changed with introduction of Twitter Blue services.

In a later tweet, Editor Smita Prakash stated that till the time Twitter restores the main ANI handle, the agency will be tweeting all the news from its other verified handles: @ani_digital and @AHindinews.

NDTV's account also locked

A few hours later, NDTV's Twitter account was also locked and showed a similar message saying the "account does not exist".