Twitter said on Tuesday that it was suing the Indian government, challenging a recent order to remove content and block accounts in the country.
The lawsuit was filed in Karnataka High Court in Bangalore after the government threatened criminal action against Twitter executives if they failed to comply with the order, the company said.
The company was given a deadline of Monday to block dozens of accounts and posts within India. It complied, but later sought court relief.
The Indian government urged Twitter to follow the rules. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, said at a press conference on Tuesday: “It is everyone’s responsibility to abide by the laws that have been passed by the country’s Parliament.
Twitter’s lawsuit follows separately legal action by WhatsApp also pushed back against the country’s strict new rules regarding the internet, which WhatsApp has described as oppressive.
Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been working for several years to consolidate the power of tech companies and stricter police what is being said on the internetand they used the new information technology law to stifling dissent. For example, Twitter has been asked to remove content related to civil liberties complaints, protests, press freedom, and criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic. WhatsApp has been told it will be required to make people’s private messages “traceable” to government agencies upon request.
In addition, the new rules require social media companies to employ India-based executives to ensure companies comply with government requirements for content takedowns and lock account. If that doesn’t happen, those executives could be held criminally responsible, facing prison sentences of up to seven years.
Twitter has previously criticized the government’s tactics and called for it respect freedom of speech. The company says that India’s laws are being used “arbitrarily and disproportionately” against the company and its users, many of whom are journalists, opposition politicians and nonprofit groups. .
Last year, WhatsApp asked the Delhi High Court to block the enforceability of its rule on the traceability of people’s messages. The government has said of the WhatsApp case that privacy is not “absolute and it is subject to reasonable limitations.”
That case is still pending.
Lawsuits that are part of an open battle between the biggest tech companies and governments around the world, among which they have the upper hand. Australia and the European Union have drafted or passed legislation to limit the power of GoogleFacebook and other companies on online speech, while other countries are trying to rein in the companies’ services to prevent dissent and quell protests.
The Indian government’s move to force Twitter to block censored accounts and posts, experts say, comes at a time when the government has been accused of weaponizing a loose definition of what content it allows. is annoying to follow the critics.
In February 2021, the company has permanently blocked more than 500 accounts and moved an unspecified number of others from opinion in India after the government accused them of making one-sided remarks about Mr. Modi. Twitter at the time said it had taken no action against the accounts of journalists, politicians and activists, and said it did not believe the orders to block them were “consistent with Indian law”. Degree”.
In May of that year, police in India raid Twitter offices after the company decided to label tweets by politicians from Mr. Modi’s party as “manipulative media”. Those tweets attacked members of the opposition, who have used the platform to criticize Mr. Modi and what they call his government’s stumbling response to the pandemic.
And in recent weeks, police in New Delhi have made arrests Mohammed Zubair, a co-founder of a popular fact-checking website, for a 2018 tweet sharing images from an old Bollywood movie. The government said the image had caused discord in the community, after a Twitter account had only a few followers and only one tweet complaining about it and tagging Delhi police – before the account This disappeared soon after.
Last week, Twitter was ordered to block tweets from Freedom House, an American nonprofit that mentioned India as an example of a country where press freedom is on the decline.
Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said: “It is speaking to how an international report on India’s press freedom rankings is reacting to censorship, rather than debate and discussion. essay. “It’s an undemocratic and authoritarian response.”
Lawyers and technology experts say that Twitter and other social media companies are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are required to obey the laws of their country, but they are also challenging them to uphold their right to free speech in the world’s largest democracy.
Salman Waris, a lawyer at TechLegis in New Delhi who specializes in international technology law.
Mujib Mashal contribution report.
