New Delhi: In a new flashpoint between X (formerly Twitter) and the Indian government, the social media platform “disagreed” with the Centre over the latter’s orders to block certain accounts.
In a post on X, the Global Government Affairs department of the social media platform said, “The Indian government has issued executive orders requiring X to act on specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment.”
It added, “In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts.”
Watch X post on disagreement with Indian government below:
The platform further added, “Consistent with our position, a writ appeal challenging the Indian government’s blocking orders remains pending. We have also provided the impacted users with notice of these actions in accordance with our policies.”
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“Due to legal restrictions, we are unable to publish the executive orders, but we believe that making them public is essential for transparency. This lack of disclosure can lead to a lack of accountability and arbitrary decision-making,” it said.
Meanwhile, unverified sources said most of the accounts that the government wanted to be blocked were tweeting in support of the farmers protest being held at the Punjab and Haryana borders. In fact, the Ministry of Home Affairs has asked hundreds of social media accounts across platforms to be blocked due to the same, sources added.
It may be recalled that earlier, the Centre had asked X, then Twitter, to pull down nearly 1,200 accounts for their alleged links with the Khalistan movement. It had also later asked the social media platform to take down 250 accounts, which included handles used by journalists.
While Twitter had initially blocked the accounts, it had later removed the restriction citing freedom of speech in India.
