X ‘disagrees’ with Centre’s censorship orders, calls for greater transparency

In an early morning post on Thursday, X’s government affairs handle said that while it was complying with New Delhi’s blocking orders, it “disagrees” with its actions.

“Due to legal restrictions, we are unable to publish the executive orders, but we believe that making them public is essential for transparency. This lack of disclosure can lead to a lack of accountability and arbitrary decision-making,” it said in the post.

The Indian government has issued executive orders requiring X to act on specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment.

In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however,…

— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) February 21, 2024

The Indian Express has learnt that a majority of these accounts were tweeting in support of the ongoing farmers’ protests. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Home Affairs had ordered the blocking of hundreds of accounts and links on various social media platforms – Facebook, X, and Instagram.

“The Indian government has issued executive orders requiring X to act on specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment,” X said. “In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts.”

A senior IT Ministry official said that the government is reviewing X’s statement and will soon respond to it.

The company said it has sent a notice to users whose account was impacted due to the government’s orders: “Consistent with our position, a writ appeal challenging the Indian government’s blocking orders remains pending. We have also provided the impacted users with notice of these actions in accordance with our policies.”

In the last five years, the platform has had a troubled history with wide-ranging stakeholders — from the Centre to the Opposition, conservative groups to civil society. India is a key market for the microblogging platform where it has close to 30 million users.

The latest tiff is reminiscent of escalating tensions between the platform and the Indian government during the earlier farmers’ protest in 2021. At the height of those protests, the Centre had asked the company 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.

At the time, X had responded by blocking some of the accounts but subsequently unblocked them, which irked the IT ministry. Later, Twitter told the government that it would 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, X had 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.

After Musk had acquired the company, he had called Indian regulations “strict”, and 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.