The government of India on Wednesday said that in 2020, 4,448 URLs were asked to be officially blocked on social media platforms even as Russia threatened to slow down Twitter on account of refusal to toe the local laws there.

Asked by a fellow parliamentarian to give details on the number and the details of requests sent by the Indian government to Twitter and Facebook to block accounts, hashtags or pages in the last five years, Sanjay Dhotre, the junior minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology admitted there have been several instances when the government invoked Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to request such blocks.

According to the Minister, the number of Twitter and Facebook URLs blocked during last five years are as follows:

Year	Facebook	Twitter
2s016	357	194
2017	526	103
2018	155	224
2019	2049	1041
2020	1717	2731

Meanwhile, India is not the only country where SM platforms are having run-ins with the local government. In a dispatch from Moscow, Reuters reported that Russia said on Wednesday it was slowing down the speed of Twitter in retaliation for its alleged failure to remove banned content, and threatened a total block if the US platform did not comply with its deletion demands.

The move, which escalates a growing stand-off between Moscow and the American social media firms, comes weeks after Russian authorities accused Twitter and others of failing to delete posts it said illegally urged children to take part in anti-Kremlin protests.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Russia has traditionally taken a more hands-off role in policing the internet than neighbouring China. But as domestic political tensions have risen this year over the arrest and jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, which triggered nationwide protests, it has signaled a tougher line.

Roskomnadzor, the state communications regulator, said in a statement that as of Wednesday there were more than 3,000 posts containing illegal content on Twitter, which it accused of ignoring its deletion requests for years.

Twitter was already under pressure in Russia after it was named as one of five social media platforms being sued for allegedly failing to delete posts urging children to take part in illegal protests, the Interfax news agency cited a Moscow court as saying on Tuesday.

“The slowing down will be applied to 100 per cent of mobile devices and on 50 per cent of non-mobile devices,” Reuters quoted the regulator as saying, adding, “If (Twitter) continues to ignore the requirements of the law, the enforcement measures will be continued… (right up to blocking it).”

The move would affect video and photo content but not text, Interfax cited a regulatory official as saying.