Twitter & India Still Arguing Over Whether Or Not Twitter Accounts Supporting Farmer Protests Need To Be Removed

from the mass-censorship dept

Last week we wrote about the Indian government threatening to jail Twitter employees after the company reinstated a long list of accounts that the government demanded be blocked (Twitter blocked them for a brief period of time, before reinstating them). The accounts included some Indian celebrities and journalists, who were talking about the headline news regarding farmer protests. The Mohdi government has proven to be incredibly thin-skinned about negative coverage, and despite Indian protections for free expression, was demanding out-and-out censorship of these accounts. The threats to lock up Twitter employees put the company in an impossible position -- and it has now agreed to geoblock (but not shut down) some accounts, but not journalists, activists and politicians.

The company implies, strongly, that the demands from the Indian government deliberately mixed actual incendiary/dangerous content with mere political critics of the Mohdi administration -- and makes it clear that it's willing to take action on "harmful content" or accounts that legitimately violate Twitter's rules. But that it will not agree to do so for those whose speech it believes is protected under Indian freedom of expression principles:

• We took steps to reduce the visibility of the hashtags containing harmful content, which included prohibiting them from trending on Twitter and appearing as recommended search terms.
• We took a range of enforcement actions — including permanent suspension in certain cases — against more than 500 accounts escalated across all MeitY orders for clear violations of Twitter’s Rules.
• Separately, today, we have withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders under our Country Withheld Content policy within India only. These accounts continue to be available outside of India. Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law, and, in keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians. To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. We informed MeitY of our enforcement actions today, February 10, 2021. We will continue to maintain dialogue with the Indian government and respectfully engage with them.

Later that day, after Twitter made this announcement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) set up a call with Twitter officials and released an incredibly lame press release, effectively saying "we support freedom of expression, but not when protesters say stuff we don't like."

Secretary told the Twitter representatives that in India, we value freedom and we value criticism because it is part of our democracy. India has a robust mechanism for protection of freedom of speech and expression that is very elaborately explained as Fundamental Rights under Article 19 (1) of the Constitution of India. But freedom of expression is not absolute and it is subject to reasonable restrictions as mentioned in Article 19 (2) of the Constitution of India. Various judgments of the Supreme Court have also upheld this from time to time....

[....]

Secretary took up the issue of using a hashtag on ‘farmer genocide’ with Twitter executives and expressed strong displeasure on the way Twitter acted after an emergency order was issued to remove this hashtag and content related to that. Spreading misinformation using an incendiary and baseless hashtag referring to ‘farmer genocide’ at a time when such irresponsible content can provoke and inflame the situation is neither journalistic freedom nor freedom of expression as envisaged under Article 19 of the Constitution of India. Despite the attention of Twitter being drawn to such content by the Government through a lawful process, the platform allowed the content with this hashtag to continue, which was extremely unfortunate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the MeitY tries to insist that farmers protesting are somehow the equivalent of Trumpist insurrectionists storming the Capitol:

Secretary reminded Twitter about the action taken by Twitter during the Capitol Hill episode in the USA and compared that with the disturbance in Red Fort in India and its aftermath. He expressed dissatisfaction over Twitter’s differential treatment in the two incidents. A deep sense of disappointment at seeing Twitter side not with ‘freedom of expression’ but rather with those who seek to abuse such freedom and provoke disturbance to public order, was conveyed to the Twitter representative.

Of course, this seems incredibly misleading. Remember, Twitter did remove content that actually advocated for violence, and diminished the reach of certain other accounts. The ones it left up were reporters, activists and politicians.

Bizarrely, most of the reporting on this is presenting it as if Twitter "caved" to India's demands. But that does not appear to be what happened at all. Yes, Twitter did block or limit some accounts, but clearly chose to leave up many more. Earlier reports suggested the government demanded 1,100 accounts, but Twitter only limited 500. Now, there are reasons to be concerned when a government demands (and gets) the removal of any accounts, but it seems clear that Twitter is not just immediately complying with all such demands, and is pushing back in more than half of those accounts -- which is why the MeitY apparently is still quite angry about all of this.

Still, for American politicians looking to push incredibly short-sighted bills that will put more pressure on websites to remove accounts, just look at how such things will (1) be abused and (2) used by foreign governments to justify and defend outright censorship.

Filed Under: censorship, content moderation, farm protests, free speech, india, threats
Companies: twitter

Indian Government Threatens To Jail Twitter Employees For Restoring Accounts The Government Wants Blocked

from the watch-out-what-you-ask-for dept

We keep pointing out to people the very slippery slope that happens when we say it's okay for the government to tell websites how they have to moderate. And what's happening in India is a very important case study. As you're hopefully aware, there have been ongoing farmer protests in India, as farmers are quite upset about regulatory changes that they fear will destroy their businesses. The protests have been going on for weeks, but things have recently escalated to include some violence.

Prime Minister Narendra Mohdi is responding to all of this in a similar fashion to what he's done before: by cracking down on free speech and going after his critics. It started with full internet blackouts in places where the protesters were, with the government claiming it was necessary to cut off the internet to "maintain public safety" (yeah, right). Then, the government demanded that Twitter block the accounts of various journalists, publications, and celebrities who have been critical of Mohdi. Twitter complied, but after widespread criticism, it turned those accounts back on, apparently telling the Indian government that the tweets were protected free speech and newsworthy.

One of the accounts that had been taken down was the Caravan, a small but influential investigative journalism outfit that is widely read among politicians. A writer for Caravan, Vidya Krishnan, has a chilling account in The Atlantic about how this crackdown represents "the end of the Indian Idea." It's well worth reading. It notes that beyond just having the Twitter account shut down, the Mohdi government has arrested a Caravan writer and begun an investigation of its editors.

These latest attacks, part of a pattern of legal cases, personal threats, and intimidation against news outlets and individual journalists, make certain what was becoming evident: The freedom of the press, a constitutional right, is endangered in Modi’s India. The brazen use of social-media networks to censor journalists, the use of the police and courts to silence them, and, more fundamentally, the belief that those who report on protests are somehow undermining the state illustrate how much has changed in India, and how far the country has strayed from its founding ideals.

On Tuesday, the situation became an even more dangerous attack on free speech. It appears that Mohdi's administration is not at all happy with Twitter's decision to push back and re-enable the accounts it demanded blocked. It is now threatening Twitter employees with jailtime and fines for the decision.

On Tuesday, the IT ministry sent a notice to Twitter, ordering it to block the accounts once again. It also threatened people who work at Twitter's Indian arm with legal consequences, which could include a fine or a jail term of up to seven years.

“This is really problematic,” said Nikhil Pahwa, editor of MediaNama, a technology policy website, and an internet activist. “I don’t see why the government of India should wade into this territory of trying to censor tweets when they have much bigger problems to deal with.”

When we point out situations like this, in which the government would abuse such power, we often have people say that we're being ridiculous and such power wouldn't be abused in the US (if it was somehow even deemed allowed under the 1st Amendment). But as that Atlantic article points out, India has freedom of expression in its Constitution as well.

And even if you believe in American exceptionalism (which you probably shouldn't) and that it would be okay if the law were changed in the US, but not elsewhere, just note that countries like India (and many others) would use such a law in the US as an excuse for why their own crackdowns on free expression are in accordance with US norms.

And, of course, this puts Twitter in a somewhat impossible spot. If it does what everyone knows is the right thing morally and ethically, and refuses to suspend these accounts, it faces a difficult future in the country. Its own employees may be thrown in jail and fined. India has already been not just blocking the internet, but many Chinese apps such as TikTok. I would not put it past the Mohdi government to declare a block on Twitter. Of course, if the company caves in and takes the content back down, then it raises significant moral questions about how it may be supporting the crackdown on free speech, a free press, and on protesters in India.

It is easy to argue that Twitter should continue to take this stand and do the morally right thing, but it's much easier to do it as a nobody typing words on a computer screen than as someone actually making the very real call which could have widespread consequences for many, many people.

Filed Under: farm protests, free press, free speech, india, narendra mohdi
Companies: twitter