Arc of chill: Jack Dorsey poster to farmers protest to Elon Musk’s new line

Dorsey and the company’s former legal head, Vijaya Gadde, held a closed-door meeting with a small group of women journalists and activists for feedback on safety concerns of different kinds of Twitter users in 2018. At the end of the meeting, Dorsey was photographed holding a poster that read “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” which led to a major controversy.

Many conservative groups called for a boycott of the platform which forced the company to issue an apology. “I’m very sorry for this. It’s not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us – we should have been more thoughtful,” Gadde said in a tweet at the time. “Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India.”

A team of the Delhi Police Special Cell at Twitter India’s Lado Sarai office. (PTI/File)

Turning point: The farmer protest

At the height of the farmers’ protest in 2021, the Centre asked Twitter to take down nearly 1,200 accounts for alleged “Khalistan” links. Before that, it had asked the platform to take down more than 250 accounts, including of journalists reporting on the protests.

Twitter responded by blocking some of the accounts but subsequently unblocked them, which irked the IT ministry. Later, Twitter told the government that it will not restrict accounts belonging to journalists, activists, and politicians in India citing freedom of speech on its platform.

The reply, however, did not go down well with the government, which said that the platform could not possibly “assume the role of a court and justify non-compliance”.

Under pressure, Twitter relented and blocked a number of accounts including that of sitting Rajya Sabha MP and SP leader Sukhram Singh Yadav as part of the purge. At the time, Yadav’s Twitter account had 244 followers, and he had been vocal about the farmer protests in his posts, using hashtags such as #kisanektajindabad and #singhuborder.

The Delhi Police visit

In December 2020, Twitter tagged a tweet by BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya as “manipulated media”, the first time the feature had shown up on timelines in India. The platform said it uses the tag when a user shares edited multimedia content with an intent of misleading others.

A few months later, in May 2021, Twitter applied the same tag to a tweet by BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra which contained an alleged Congress “toolkit” against the Modi government.

In a letter seeking that the tag be removed, the IT Ministry said the move by Twitter appeared “prejudged”, “prejudiced”, and “arbitrary”.

A few days later, a team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell knocked on the doors of Twitter India’s Delhi and Gurgaon offices to ostensibly serve the social media platform a notice.

Multiple ultimatums

* A ‘last notice’ in June 2021

After the Information Technology Rules, 2021 came into effect in May 2021, requiring social media companies to hire key personnel in India, the Centre came down on Twitter for not conforming to the rules. The law required that companies hire a chief compliance officer, a nodal officer to coordinate with law enforcement agencies, and a nodal officer to handle users’ issues. In June 2021, the IT Ministry issued “one last notice” to the company to follow the rules.

After a case was filed in the Delhi High Court by an individual over Twitter’s non-compliance, the company finally hired the required individuals. Employees at Twitter at the time – who have since been fired after Elon Musk’s takeover – expressed concerns in private over the hires since the IT Rules placed a criminal penalty on companies’ compliance officers over violation of the rules.

* A ‘last chance’ in June 2022

Another “last chance” was given to Twitter a year later by the IT Ministry over the company’s non-compliance in adhering to content takedown notices of the government. If Twitter failed to comply, the Centre said, it would lose safe harbour protections under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and become legally liable for the content users post on its platform.

Even though Twitter is a big tech company, no social media platform can efficiently function without safe harbour protections, a crucial tenet of online free speech that was a key reason behind the meteoric rise of Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Flashpoint: Twitter sues Govt

It all came to a head just a month after Twitter was given one “last chance”. The company took the IT Ministry to court over its content blocking orders, calling some of them disproportionate and arbitrary. According to Twitter’s lawsuit, between February 2021 and 2022, the Ministry issued 10 blocking orders, directing the company to take down over 1,400 accounts and 175 tweets under Section 69 (A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Twitter told the court that “increasingly” the Ministry has been issuing orders to block entire accounts without informing the company the specific tweets made by these accounts. The Karnataka High Court, where the case was filed, has reserved its judgement.

Irking the Opposition

Even as Twitter was juggling between the police at its offices, ultimatums from the government, it was also drawing criticism from the Opposition over its handling of the site. In August 2021, the platform temporarily locked the account of Rahul Gandhi followed by the account of the Congress along with the accounts of some of its leaders, including Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken and Manickam Tagore.

The Congress condemned the actions of Twitter and accused it of adopting “double standards” and “violating the freedom of expression under the diktat of the Modi government”.

Musk’s new line

In April this year, Musk, who had earlier called Indian regulations “strict”, said he would rather comply with the government’s blocking orders than risk sending Twitter employees to jail. He was alluding to the IT Rules, 2021, under which a senior representative of social media companies – the chief compliance officer – can be potentially jailed for violating norms.