Twitter ‘shows’ Gilgit-Baltistan part of India-held Kashmir

GILGIT: Twitter seems to have change the location of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) to parts of India-held Jammu and Kashmir as the users were unable to access government of Pakistan’s account from the region, ARY News reported on Sunday.

Twitter seems to have blocked access to the government of Pakistan’s official account in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), with the micro-blogging platform showing the region part of India-held Kashmir.

While I’m in Gilgit, with my location on, twitter locates me in Jammu & Kashmir.
And yes, @GovtofPakistan isn’t accessible either. This means India intruded into Pakistan’s digital space, influencing @elonmusk and his twitter.

What to do now? pic.twitter.com/8ST7p0FQXh

— ShabbirMir Shina (@ShabbirMir) July 7, 2023

When users turn on the location feature on the app, tweets sent from the territory are marked as originating from Jammu and Kashmir.

The issue came to light when Twitter users in GB complained they were unable to access the government’s official account.

When users tried to access the account, a message appears stating the “account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand”.

It is pertinent to mention here that the government of Pakistan’s official Twitter account was banned in India in March 2023. In 2022, the account was withheld twice over “legal complaints”.

In June 2022, Twitter had banned a slew of Pakistani accounts including that of the Pakistani mission in the UN, Turkiye, Iran and Egypt and Radio Pakistan.