‘Free Speech’ Twitter Is Now Globally Blocking Posts Critical Of The Modi Government
A few weeks ago we wrote about how Elon Musk's Twitter was now blocking tweets in India at the request of the government. As we noted, there's a lot of important history here. India had demanded such blocking in early 2021 and the old regime at Twitter had pushed back strongly on it. After fighting about it, Twitter agreed to geoblock some tweets, but said it would not agree to do that for tweets from journalists, activists, or politicians.
The company also filed a lawsuit claiming that the content removal demands were an abuse of power by the Modi government. This lawsuit is still ongoing.
Of course, in the interim, Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter, and while he has kept the lawsuit going (for now), he had complained about Twitter's lawsuit when it first happened.
When we wrote that story a few weeks ago about Elon's Twitter agreeing to block accounts of journalists, politicians, and activists, some of Musk's staunchest defenders in our comments insisted that the article was unfair, because Musk was doing the same thing that Twitter had done. Except that's false. The old Twitter explicitly refused to apply the geoblocks to journalists, activists, or politicians.
Either way, Musk's Twitter has now taken it up a notch. Not only is it geoblocking such accounts, in some cases, it has now instituted a global block. That is, Musk's Twitter is willing to allow the Modi government to censor his critics globally, rather than just in India. The first known victim of this is Saurav Das, an investigative journalist in India.
As free speech activist, and occasional Techdirt contributor, Sarah McLaughlin notes, allowing India to dictate global speech rules is a worst case scenario for free speech and content moderation."
It's also the kind of thing that again calls into question the (always silly) claims from people that Elon Musk's focus with Twitter has anything to do with a principled stance on free speech. That's never been true, but this only serves to emphasize that fact.
Meanwhile, Das is trying to find out why he's been blocked, and has filed a Right to Information application with the government to find out why his tweets were blocked, and why they were blocked globally, but doesn't seem hopeful that he'll find out.
A Twitter that actually believed in free speech - and not Elon's Musk's encapsulation of free speech as that which matches the law" - might want to step in and help Das. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen.