Elon Musk’s Twitter faces censorship allegations in India free speech battle

Elon Musk is going through allegations of being complicit with state censorship after Twitter appeared to take sides with India’s authorities in a turbulent free speech combat over a documentary essential of the nation’s prime minister. 

The combat revolves round a brand new documentary from the BBC that focuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delving into accusations that the politician allowed religious-based violence towards Muslims. India is majority Hindu with a Muslim minority. 

Modi’s authorities stated it has ordered social media platforms together with Twitter to censor posts in regards to the documentary, which it calls “hostile propaganda and anti-India rubbish,” and Twitter seems to have complied by blocking sure tweets from being seen inside India, in keeping with screenshots of notices posted this week by Twitter customers. 

“This Tweet from @derekobrienmp has been withheld in India in response to a authorized demand,” read one notice posted by Derek O’Brien, a member of the Indian parliament. The discover appeared in place of a tweet in regards to the documentary, in keeping with O’Brien’s screenshot. 

Musk, the tech billionaire who purchased Twitter final 12 months and has known as himself a free speech absolutist, acknowledged the topic in a tweet Wednesday whereas making no guarantees about what he’ll do. 

“First I’ve heard,” Musk wrote in response to a question from Canadian lawyer David Freiheit. 

“It will not be doable for me to repair each side of Twitter worldwide in a single day, whereas nonetheless working Tesla and SpaceX, amongst different issues,” he added, referring to the a number of firms the place he’s CEO. 

Musk’s temporary reply was in distinction to the sometimes-detailed, customized responses he has given to different individuals who complain to him about Twitter. “Complaint hotline operator on-line! Please point out your complaints under,” he tweeted in November. 

Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for added remark, however a backlash is constructing towards the San Francisco firm’s obvious choice to adjust to India’s demand. 

“Self-proclaimed free-speech absolutists like Elon Musk should stroll the speak. By withholding Twitter posts on [the] BBC documentary, Musk has made clear that for him, income matter greater than human rights,” Rasheed Ahmed, government director of the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group, stated in an announcement Wednesday. 

Opponents of Modi have for years accused him of inaction in the face of violent Hindu nationalism, together with the massacre of more than 1,000 Muslims in 2002, when he was head of the Indian state of Gujarat. Modi has called the accusations a smear. 

Actor John Cusack was amongst these criticizing Musk, calling him a “actual profile in cowardice.” Cusack, a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in 2016 co-wrote a book on authorities surveillance with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy. 

Matthew Yglesias, a journalist whose every day e-newsletter is popular contained in the Biden administration, stated he feared what Musk would possibly do for different hard-line figures corresponding to Chinese chief Xi Jinping. 

“If he is keen to do that for the Indian prime minister contemplate Xi’s affect,” he wrote. (China is critical to Tesla’s automotive enterprise.) 

Indian authorities continued a crackdown on the BBC documentary Wednesday, as police in Delhi detained college students as they gathered to watch the motion picture, known as “India: The Modi Question,” Reuters reported. 

It will not be unparalleled for tech firms to dam content material regionally in response to an order from a courtroom or different authority. In a transparency report from earlier than Musk purchased Twitter, the corporate stated it obtained 47,572 native calls for to take away content material through the second half of 2021; 97% of them have been from 5 nations, the corporate stated: Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and India. Within India, Twitter stated it complied 5.6% of the time. 

Lumen, a Harvard University-based database that collects authorities censorship requests issued to tech platforms, said Monday in a weblog submit that it had obtained a copy of India’s order to Twitter. 

India’s order additionally utilized to YouTube, and YouTube eliminated some copies of the documentary from its web site and app. But YouTube stated it acted in response to a copyright-related demand, and on Wednesday the BBC stated it additionally had requested the elimination of clips from web sites and platforms it believed infringed on BBC’s copyright. 

The Internet Archive additionally eliminated copies of the documentary, displaying as a substitute a discover that gadgets “could also be taken down for numerous causes.” The archive didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. 

But the BBC stated it didn’t make any related request to Twitter. 

“The BBC has not requested Twitter to take away any content material regarding the documentary,” the British broadcaster stated in an announcement. 

The BBC has broadcast the documentary solely in the United Kingdom and has not licensed it to any third-party streaming companies to date. 

Raman Chima, a former Google worker who’s now a lawyer for Access Now, a human rights group, stated the Indian authorities’s actions present human rights are beneath risk in India. 

“The IT Rules are being exploited, handing authorities license to strain platforms to censor content material in ’emergency’ circumstances,” he stated in a Twitter thread. 

“These takedowns underscore the fast enlargement of state censorship in India,” Chima added.