Elon Musk's X claims it received orders from Indian government to withhold certain accounts, posts
Elon Musk
Billionaire Elon Musk's X (formerly known as Twitter) has claimed that the Indian government issued 'executive orders' to the social media company to act against certain accounts and posts.
In a lengthy post by the platform's Global Government Affairs team, X said although it disagreed with the orders, it had complied and taken action against the specified accounts.
"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," the post read.
"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," it added.
The statement said a writ appeal challenging the Indian government's blocking order remained pending.
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"Due to legal restrictions, we are unable to publish 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," the statement read.
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X's policy of accepting local government's request
X accepting the diktat by the Indian government should not come as a surprise. After meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York last year, X boss Musk said his company didn't have any choice but to accept the demands of the local government.
“Twitter doesn't have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don't obey local government laws then we will get shut down," Musk told the reporters.
"The best we can do is to follow the laws in any given country," the billionaire said, adding that it is impossible for "us to do more than that".
Musk was responding to comments made by hispredecessor Jack Dorsey who claimed that thesocial media platform received threats of being booted out of Indiaafter not accepting the request to block certain accounts at the peak of the farmers' protest by the government.
“India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’… ‘we would raid the homes of your employees', which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit’. And this is India, a democratic country," said Dorsey.
However,Union Minister of State forElectronics & Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar posted a rebuttal where he said Dorsey was attempting to "brush out a very dubious period of X's history" where the company was repeatedly found non-compliant with the local law.
(With inputs from agencies)