Twitter Challenges India to Court Over Blocked-Tweets, Suspension Orders
Twitter has filed a legal petition to overturn as many as 39 blocking orders from the Indian government.
(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. is challenging a series of account-blocking and suspension orders in India, clashing once more with a government that’s sought to rein in US tech giants.
The social network operator has filed a legal petition to overturn as many as 39 blocking orders, arguing they’ve been too broad and arbitrary. The company complied with the orders under protest, but now seeks a ruling from the Karnataka High Court to set them aside, according to a person who has viewed the petition’s content.
Twitter is challenging the Indian government’s content blocking orders for the first time. The San Francisco-based company and the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have repeatedly clashed in recent months as the government seeks to gain greater control over online information censorship.
Twitter argued that account-level blocking is a disproportionate measure and the government didn’t give proper reasons for requests to bar content, which was often political and from public figures. It’s challenging just a sliver of the overall blocking orders it’s received since February 2021, covering more than 1,400 accounts, 175 tweets and one hashtag, according to the person, who asked not to be named as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Twitter representatives declined to comment, while technology ministry representatives didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.
The US company isn’t challenging the laws that give government powers to order content blocking, nor rules that can hold executives at social media operators like Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google personally liable for failure, and even arrested. But Twitter’s attempt to resist the administration is significant given a history of clashes.
The company started to push back against the government’s directives in May this year when it sought reversal of some of the orders. About a month later, the ministry issued notices asking Twitter officials to appear in person and explain why action shouldn’t be initiated against them, the person said, citing the content of the petition.
Twitter complied but more notices followed. The government did agree to withdraw its orders for 10 accounts, but sought blocking of another 27 online links. Twitter again acceded, but lodged its complaint on July 5, the person said.
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