GUWAHATI:

platform

has suspended Assam Police instance saying cops are not welcome because it wants the community to feel safe and secure.

Assam police, which had become a darling of the twitterati, many from

, for its witty messages, particularly on dangers of fake news and rumours, had recently announced via its twitter handle that it is in Mastodon too.

A Mastodon moderator has posted, “The account of the Assam Police has been suspend from this instance. We decided that we will not welcome cops on this instance, and we encourage the rest of the fediverse to do the same. Following multiple reports, we decided that it's more important that our community feels safe and in security, than to be a platform for official communication.”

A source said that Mastodon deleted the Assam Police account on November 14 shortly after it posted a message on child safety on Chidren’s Day saying “Children are early adaptors, they are navigating the world through the Internet. Knowing how to ensure online safety, is now an essential skill. On this Childrens Day, join us in creating digitally empowered and cyber safe communities! Let's talk Cyber Safety.

“We wrote to Mastodon asking the reason for deleting our account. We told them to look into our socila media profile. They said that their people feel that they don’t want cops there,” the source said.

Assam Police’s social media initiative, #TheThinkCampaign has recently been awarded with the Social Media for Empowerment Award for community mobilisation initiative by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF).

One of its most liked campaign against fake news was christened ‘Bohemian Fact’, inspired by Queen song. Its another campaign on Holi called ‘colour with consent’ was also a big hit with the twitterati. Bollywood celebrities

, Kajol and

have also endorsed many of its tweets.

Assam Police turned super active on social media, particularly Twitter, when it decided to take on fake news after two Guwahati youths had fatal end at the hands of rumor mongers in Karbi Anglong in 2018.

Mastodon is similar to Twitter except that while Twitter interactions take place on a single server controlled by one company, Mastodon is a collection of many ‘instances’, independently run by its owner and sets its own policies.