Amid the ongoing tension between India-China at the border, Twitter suddenly went on fire when Nitin Gokhale (1), who was live near the airport of Leh, noticed that his location was visible as “Jammu and Kashmir, People Republic of China.’ This news went like fire in the forest, and it gained the attraction of every local news channel. Social media trolls and memes were on point, and humorous content was shared all over the internet. It proved to be a Sunday of surprises for social media.
Border tensions between India and China were immediately considered after this event happened.
National Security Analyst Nitin Gokhale wrote on his official Twitter handle that “Twitter folks, I just did a live (sic) from the Hall of Fame. Giving Hall of Fame the location and guess what it is saying Jammu & Kashmir, People’s Republic of China! Are you guys nuts?”
Further, Chairman of Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Kanchan Gupta stated that ‘Nitin was not the only one to face this issue. There were many logging at that moment: Who met the same problem.
Even Kanchan Gupta mentioned that this is a violation of the law, and strict action should be taken for betterment in the future.
Reposting: Meanwhile this is Twitter’s response to the geo tagging issue. Would have liked an apology/acknowledgement that it was a mistake. Will test it again today pic.twitter.com/GP9z2x8kA9
— Nitin A. Gokhale (@nitingokhale) October 20, 2020
So Twitter has decided to reconfigure geography and declare Jammu & Kashmir as part of the People’s Republic of China. If this is not a violation of India laws, what is? Citizens of India have been punished for far less. But US Big Tech is above the law?
Xiaomi’s unexpected bug
When the whole social media handled the hype of the Twitter issue, another news burst the internet. It was found that a famous Chinese company Xiaomi faced a bug. Weather App of Xiaomi was not showing Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India. This error regarding the apps triggered the rumors that the Chinese company supports the Chinese communist party’s agenda that Ladakh and AP aren’t considered a part of India.
Alongside AP data regarding many other cities and states was found missing on the app, which led to many misassumptions. Chinese companies are already facing many backlashes from the rest of the world due to Covid-19 Outbreak. Moreover, anti-china sentiments have already been built-in India. India responded to this by banning many Chinese applications. Many of the apps included Xiaomi’s default apps.
Many Indian mobile manufacturers are looking to benefit from this situation by promoting their brands, such as LAVA.
Apologies and official statements
After facing many backlashes and criticism from India’s people, Twitter launched an official statement stating that “We have become aware of technical issues on Sunday and understand and respect the sensitivities around it. Teams have worked swiftly to investigate and resolve the concerned geotag issue’.
Although Twitter’s statement is justifying but still for a social media platform like Twitter, these mistakes are not valid, especially when there are border tensions inside a country.
On the other hand, errors made by Xiaomi can not be justified. However, some officials of Xiaomi have still confirmed that it was a technical error and bug, and now the bug has been improved by the company’s technical system.
In an official statement issued earlier, Xiaomi claimed that
“We would like to clarify that the weather app on our devices uses data from multiple third-party data sources. We understand that the weather-related data is not available on the current app for many locations. This is a technical error on our application. We are working on improving the app to get the best experience for our users. As always, we are committed to India and our users across the country to provide them with the best possible user experience.”
Just like Twitter, Xiaomi has accepted the mistake, and they have given the customers believe that nothing like this will happen again.
Similar issues in the past
As far as Twitter is concerned, this was not the first time Twitter made such a mistake. Here is the list of a few more mistakes made by Twitter:-
- One Employee deactivated the account of US President Donald Trump. However, this mistake was rectified within just 11 minutes, and the solution was provided.
- Twitter authorities restricted the rose McGowan account, and later, they faced a lot of criticism for their decision.
- According to the sources, Twitter mistakenly blocked the account of the New York times, and later it took them 24 hours to recover the account.
To sum up, it can be seen that Twitter has made many mistakes in the past, and the improvement has not been seen yet. These small mistakes can affect the market value and goodwill of the platform. So, it is crucial for Twitter to maintain the quality of the work done. Apart from that, Xiaomi was expected to face criticism due to its background link with China. Although it was a technical error and it can happen to any company around the world. To keep yourself more updates with regular news and articles. Please keep visiting our website and keep reading our daily based content.
