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.”
Several people on Twitter linked the account’s temporary suspension to the brand’s campaign, which supported boycotting Chinese products. On Saturday, it was among the trending topics in India with over 11,500 tweets.
After its Twitter account was restored, the cartoon was pinned as the top tweet.
Referring to the cartoon, Sodhi said that it is not Amul’s comment. “Amul butter girl comments on the mood of the nation and the topics which are in discussions among the common people.”
The managing director said that the Amul girl campaign has been going on for the last 55 years. He said the mascot generally talks about topical subjects, which reflects the mood of the nation in a humorous way.
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