The tussle between the Indian government and Twitter has now come up front. The government of India demanded the company comply with its IT rules or face the consequences. Twitter challenges the authorities’ order to take down dozens of accounts and tweets, and as a result, Twitter sues India on Tuesday in the Karnataka High Court in Bengaluru. According to the tech giant, India has abused its powers by threatening the company to disproportionately and arbitrarily delete tweets from the platform.
Twitter Sues India for Abusing Its Powers
The news flashing on social media’ Twitter sues India’ has become the talk of the town among active users of the platform. Twitter and the Indian Government are having a major clash over censoring the content in India. As per the tech giant, the Modi government is crossing limits to get what it wants. India threatened the company by notifying them of criminal actions due to neglecting the order to remove accounts and tweets. The state has given the platform deadline until Monday to block all the Twitter accounts listed by authorities. Despite partially complying with the demands of India, the tech giant decided to fight back with legal proceedings against the ruling govt. Also, the company alleged that India is putting pressure on Twitter by threatening to put the chief compliance officer in jail if the company fails to comply.
Why Is India Forcing Twitter to Remove Content?
Twitter sues India for being an authoritative entity and trying to mould the IT laws of the platform based on power. The platform is taking control back and seeking legal relief from the law. The current legal dispute between India and the tech giant follows a year and a half tussle. In February, the Modi govt threatened to throw employees in jail unless the platform removed all the accounts commenting and tweeting about Indian farmers’ protests. Afterwards, the government ordered the tech giant to delete tweets criticizing the country’s responses regarding Covid 19. Recently, the authorities ordered Twitter to block tweets from a nonprofit organization, Freedom house, because the tweets were about India’s rigidness towards freedom of speech. According to the organization, the govt and tech giants should allow people to have freedom of expression.
Twitter’s Stance
Twitter Sues India to comply with its own rules, which are entirely based on freedom of speech. Elon Musk bought the company and presented its argument that a platform is a place where everyone can have the right to speak their mind. However, the Indian government has intervened multiple times. People have been talking on social media that India’s reputation among tech giants isn’t good since Whatsapp also sued New Delhi last year to challenge new rules that could trace people’s private chats. The case is still pending in court. Twitter wants to take further legal support to free itself from boundaries covering freedom of speech and expression.
