New Delhi: X, Formerly called Twitter, has filed a significant lawsuit against the Indian government on account of the takedown of content from the platform, a major move by the platform in the waging censorship battle in India. The lawsuit that was filed on Thursday accuses the government of enforceable but illegal orders for takedown and infringement of rights on users and platforms against free speech.
The matter thus has its genesis in increased scrutiny by the Indian Government on content available online and demands being made on online platforms to assiduously remove matters hitched to them outside their remit. Well, here again, the Indian Government asked X to take down some posts about political debate, activism, and what can be termed either sensitive or harmful to public order.
The legal battle marks yet another notch in the rapidly widening gulf between tech corporations and the Government of India, given the bevy of developing regulations regarding social media platforms in the country. X contends that such removal requests infringe upon the very tenets of freedom of expression and, particularly, democratization.
The government sells that under some law, such laws give a provision made to remove content termed as threats of public order in the public interest and for the sake of national security. That suit by X that stands against government action begs to wait for how it goes to determine that probably online content regulation will work in India.
The suit was also symbolic of the broader issue with free speech in India, a charge that critics made at the runway where censorship was alleged to have taken tougher terms under the Modi government. This case carries strong implications for the future of not only social media companies operating within India but also for digital freedom in India itself.
[Source Credit: Reuters]
