Twitter Sues Indian Govt Over Content Takedown Requests; What Exactly Is Happening Here?

The war between Twitter and the government of India continues, as the former has sued the latter to challenge some block orders on tweets and accounts.

The tension between the two entities has been going on for a long time now, as much as a year and a half. 

Read on to find out all the details about this lawsuit by Twitter!

Twitter Sues Government of India

The lawsuit has been filed in the Karnataka High Court, wherein, Twitter has stated that New Delhi abused its authority by forcing it to unilaterally and disproportionately remove many tweets from its site. This has been confirmed by a source acquainted with the situation. 

In the last one and a half years, Twitter has been ordered to delete hundreds of accounts and tweets, many of which critics claim were inappropriate because they criticized the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and the policies of the Indian government.

After New Delhi threatened to file charges against Twitter’s chief compliance officer in India, the company went to court.

Over the past 18 months, Twitter has partially cooperated with the recommendations while attempting to combat many of the issues. The takedown orders can no longer be individually contested by Twitter under the country’s new IT regulations, which came into force last year, and failure to comply might lead to legal action being taken against its compliance officer there.

As per the new IT rules, any significant social media company was required to designate a chief compliance officer, a nodal contact, and a resident grievance officer in the nation to address regional issues.

IT Rules 2021

Per these rules, the platforms have to warn users not to post anything that’s defamatory, obscene, invasive of someone else’s privacy, encouraging of gambling, harmful to a child or “patently false or misleading” — among other things.

They will also have to take down content If the government orders it.

They will have to identify the original source of information shared online or forwarded among users in chat apps.

Non compliance will lead to company executives being held criminally liable.