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

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Elon Musk is facing allegations of complicity with state censorship after Twitter appeared to side with the Indian government in a tumultuous free speech fight over a documentary criticizing the country’s prime minister.

The fight revolves around a new BBC documentary which focuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delving into accusations that the politician authorized religious violence against Muslims. India is predominantly Hindu with a Muslim minority.

The Modis government says it has ordered social media platforms, including Twitter, to censor posts about the documentary, which it calls hostile propaganda and anti-Indian garbage, and Twitter appears to have complied by blocking the distribution of certain tweets in India, according to screenshots of reviews. posted this week by Twitter users.

This Tweet from @derekobrienmp was withheld in India in response to a legal request, read a notice posted by Derek OBrien, Member of Indian Parliament. The notice appeared in place of a tweet about the documentary, according to OBriens’ screenshot.

Musk, the tech billionaire who bought Twitter last year and called himself a free speech absolutist, acknowledged the subject in a tweet on Wednesday without making any promises about what the hell can do. .

For the first time I heard, Musk wrote in response to a question from Canadian lawyer David Freiheit.

It’s not possible for me to fix all aspects of Twitter around the world overnight, while running Tesla and SpaceX, among others, he added, referring to the multiple companies of which he is CEO.

Musk’s brief response contrasted with the sometimes detailed personalized replies he gave to other Twitter complainers. Online complaint hotline operator! Please mention your complaints below, he tweeted in November.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for further comment, but a backlash is brewing against the San Francisco company’s apparent decision to comply with India’s request.

The story continues

Self-proclaimed free speech absolutists like Elon Musk must lead by example. By withholding Twitter messages on [the] BBC documentary Musk has made it clear that for him profits matter more than human rights, Rasheed Ahmed, executive director of the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy organization, said in a Wednesday communicated.

Opponents of Modi have accused him of years of inaction in the face of violent Hindu nationalism, including the massacre of more than 1,000 Muslims in 2002 when he was head of the Indian state of Gujarat. Modi called the charges defamation.

Actor John Cusack was among those who criticized Musk, calling him a true profile of cowardice. Cusack, a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in 2016 co-authored a book on government surveillance with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy.

Matthew Yglesias, a reporter whose daily newsletter is popular within the Biden administration, said he fears what Musk might do for other tough figures such as Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

If he’s willing to do it for India’s prime minister, consider Xi’s influence, he wrote. (China is essential to Tesla’s automotive business.)

Indian authorities continued a crackdown on the BBC documentary on Wednesday, as Delhi police detained students as they gathered to watch the film titled India: The Modi Question, Reuters reported.

It is not uncommon for technology companies to block content locally in response to an order from a court or other authority. In a transparency report from before Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the company said it received 47,572 local content removal requests in the second half of 2021; 97% of them came from five countries, the company said: Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and India. In India, Twitter said it complied 5.6% of the time.

Lumen, a Harvard University-based database that collects government censorship requests to tech platforms, said in a blog post on Monday that it had received a copy of India’s order on Twitter.

India’s order also applied to YouTube, and YouTube removed some copies of the documentary from its website and app. But YouTube said it acted in response to a copyright-related request, and on Wednesday the BBC said it had also called for the removal of clips from websites and platforms it said infringed copyright. copyright BBC.

The Internet Archive also removed copies of the documentary, instead posting a notice that items may be removed for various reasons. The archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the BBC said it made no similar request to Twitter.

The BBC has not asked Twitter to remove any content relating to the documentary, the British broadcaster said in a statement.

The BBC aired the documentary only in the UK and has so far not licensed it to any third-party streaming services.

Raman Chima, a former Google employee who is now a lawyer for Access Now, a human rights organization, said the Indian government’s actions show that human rights are under threat in India.

IT rules are being exploited, giving authorities a license to pressure platforms to censor content in an emergency, he said in a Twitter thread.

These takedowns underscore the rapid expansion of state censorship in India, Chima added.

This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com

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