Elon Musk’s X blocks certain posts in India till election concludes

Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has taken action to block several posts in India containing "political speech shared from elected politicians, political parties, and candidates for office."

While taking the action, X in a statement late Tuesday (Apr 16) said, "In compliance with the orders, we have withheld these posts for the remainder of the election period; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general."

"We have notified the affected users and in the interest of transparency, we are publishing the takedown orders here. We call on the Election Commission to publish all of its takedown orders going forward."

What did ECI say?

The election body of India reportedly said that the posts in question were in breach of Clause (2) of Part I of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), guidelines issued by the ECI to ensure free and fair elections.

According to the Clause (2),“Criticism of other political parties, when made, shall be confined to their policies and programme, past record and work. Parties and Candidates shall refrain from criticism of all aspects of private life, not connected with the public activities of the leaders or workers of other parties. Criticism of other parties or their workers based on unverified allegations or distortion shall be avoided.”

The election body also mentioned that the posts violated paragraph 9 (iii) of the Commissioner’s advisory to all national and state-recognised political parties on March 1, 2024.“No aspect of the private life, not connected with the public activities, of the leaders or workers of other parties is to be criticised. Low level personal attacks to insult the rivals shall not be made," it read.

It's notable that such decisions are ultimately within the prerogative of respective countries. Moreover, the posts were both by the ruling and the opposition parties.

Karnataka High Court last year imposed a $61,000 fine on X for failing to remove tweets and accounts.

The court was convinced that many posts were "outrageous... treacherous and anti-national”.

(With inputs from agencies)