New Delhi, NFAPost: Manish Maheshwari, the managing director of the microblogging platform Twitter’s marketing arm in India, will be moving to the US in a new role.
Twitter confirmed the move, and said Maheshwari will be based in San Francisco as Senior Director, Revenue Strategy and Operations focused on New Market Entry.
“Thank you to @manishm for your leadership of our Indian business over the past 2+ years. Congrats on your new US-based role in charge of revenue strategy and operations for new markets worldwide. Excited to see you lead this important growth opportunity for Twitter,” tweeted Twitter Japan Vice President Yu Sasamoto on Friday.
As of now, Twitter India has not named a successor to Manish Maheshwari, whose name came up time and again in cases related to non-compliance with Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules (or IT Rules) 2021.
The Rules require significant social media intermediaries such as Twitter, who have more than 50 lakh users on their platforms, to appoint certain officials who can be held liable for content on the platform, and publish monthly compliance reports.
Twitter was involved in a very public face off with the Indian government over a host of issues ranging from refusing to takedown some content in the beginning of the year, to not fully complying with rules framed for social media companies under the new IT Rules.
Manish Maheshwari had been named in at least three police complaints, ranging from showing an incorrect map of India to a video of alleged communal violence going viral, one of which even led to him filing a caveat in the Supreme Court.
In July, the Karnataka High Court quashed a notice issued by the Uttar Pradesh Police, related to the first information report against Maheshwari. The Delhi Police also served notice on Maheshwari and Twitter India in May, related to a toolkit allegedly made by the opposition party Indian National Congress, and tagging of some ruling party politicians tweets as “manipulated media”.
In a statement following the May police notice, Twitter had made a statement saying it was concerned “with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules,”.
Following this, Manish Maheshwari was named in the UP FIR and Court cases related to non compliance of IT Rules. As part of other ongoing cases in the Delhi and Karnataka High Courts, Twitter said that content regulation comes under ambit of Twitter Inc, the US-based firm, while Twitter India provides support services for promoting and marketing Twitter in India.
Seemingly to clarify his role, which was questioned by Delhi Police in a long communication at the time of the toolkit controversy, and lso in the following court cases, Maheshwari has updated his Twitter bio to say, “Business @TwitterIndia. Not in charge of content, which is managed by Twitter Inc.”
This is followed by contact details of Twitter’s India-based grievance officer Vinay Prakash. The nodal contact person, as required by the IT Rules, is an ex-Bytedance employee Shahin Kamath, also based in India.
The new appointees are employees of Twitter Inc and not the India entity of the microblogging platform.
Before Twitter, Maheshwari worked at organisations such as Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Co. He also co-founded a mobile technology start-up txtWeb, which was incubated within American software firm Intuit.
(The story is based on Business Standard report)
