Twitter locks ANI's account for being "under 13 years of age"; NDTV's account locked as well

Social network Twitter has blocked the account of news wire agency Asian News International (ANI) for being "under 13 years of age".

ANI's editor Smita Prakash in a tweet from her personal handle revealed the reason behind the ban. Twitter, she said, has sent an email to ANI stating that the handle was blocked for being "under 13 years of age".

"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!," Smita Prakash tweeted.


"Our gold tick was taken away, substituted with blue tick and now locked out @elonmusk," she further added tagging Twitter's owner Elon Musk.

She has also shared a screenshot of ANI page that read: "Your account @ANI has been locked. In order to create a Twitter account, you must be atleast 13 years old. Twitter has determined that you don't meet these age requirements, so your account has been locked and will be removed from Twitter."

"If you think your account was locked in error, you can let us know."

At the time of writing, an error message was showing in the @ANI handle.

"This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another," read the error message.

Meanwhile, NDTV's twitter account (@NDTV) has also been blocked though exact reasons for the same is not known at this point of time.

Meanwhile, Smita Prakash announced that till the ANI account is restored, the agency will tweet all news from its other handles. "Till the time @Twitter restores the @ANI handle we will be tweeting all news from @ani_digital and @AHindinews handles."

ANI is claimed to be India’s largest news agency with 7.6 million followers on the social media platform Twitter.

https://twitter.com/smitaprakash/status/1652249658578845696/photo/1