Twitter is caught between a rock and a difficult place in India

Twitter is caught between a rock and a difficult place in India

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At the beginning of last week, Twitter (TWTR) allegedly suspended hundreds of government-mandated accounts, including a handle with more than 200,000 followers supporting farmers’ ongoing protests against new agricultural reforms and other belonging to one of the most important magazines in the country.
“In our ongoing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a request with appropriate scope from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to retain access to certain content in a particular country from time to time, “said a Twitter spokesman in a statement at the time.
The company restored the accounts a few hours later, after a public protest, but is now under pressure from the authorities to block them again. India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent a warning to Twitter threatening its employees with up to seven years in prison, according to a report by BuzzFeed News.

Twitter said it acknowledged receipt of the notification and sought a “formal dialogue” with the Indian government.

“The safety of our employees is a priority for us on Twitter,” a company spokesman told CNN Business. “We remain engaged with the government of India in a respectful position,” added the spokesman.

The Indian government has not responded to several requests for comment.

Who will blink first?

With more than 700 million Internet users, India is a huge and important market for global technology companies, although increasingly precarious, as the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to increase its control over the Internet and social media.

The Modi government has already clashed with platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp and has proposed regulations that expand its ability to police content online. It also banned TikTok and dozens of other apps last year, after diplomatic tensions with China scaled, and that resorted to the total shutdown of the Internet in various parts of the country to contain the protests.
India cuts internet in New Delhi as farmers protest police
Now Twitter is the last company to find itself in the government’s sights. The platform has become a key channel for public – and increasingly international – debate among proponents and critics of the Indian government’s agricultural laws. The company had about 19 million users in India in October last year, according to research firm Statista – more than any other country except the United States and Japan.

“The shrinking space for civil society is being mirrored by censorship and undemocratic regulatory measures to censor users of their rights to freedom of expression,” said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of the advocacy group Equality Labs. “It’s time for the world to understand how much is at risk now and for American companies like Twitter and Facebook to act before it’s too late.”

Twitter, for now, appears to be taking a stand against the Indian government by keeping accounts active.

“We review all reports we receive from the government as soon as possible and take appropriate action on those reports, while making sure to maintain our core values ​​and commitment to protect public conversation,” said the spokesperson for the company. “We strongly believe that open and free exchange of information has a positive global impact and that tweets should continue to flow.”

But if the government decides to comply with its threats or further aggravate the situation, Twitter will have few good options.

“There are two main risks: the first is for Twitter employees in India, who may be at risk if the company does not meet the requirements,” said Jillian York, director of Freedom of Speech at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The second risk is that Twitter will continue to refuse and be blocked in India. While this may be the right moral outcome, it is obviously not the best for the Indian people, many of whom rely on social media to spread important messages about what is happening happening on the ground, “she added.

A man reads tweets from Indian celebrities, one of many who support the Indian government, on his cell phone in New Delhi, India, on Thursday.

Thread the needle

While Twitter and the Indian government remain at an impasse with each other, the two sides also need to deal with external scrutiny.

Social media companies have long faced pressure to do more to combat misinformation and hate speech on their platforms. And these issues, hotly debated in the United States, often have far-reaching and more sinister consequences in countries where companies have a smaller commercial footprint, but a much greater impact.
Twitter has been more proactive in policing its platform in recent months, removing thousands of accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory and banning one of its most prolific and controversial users – former U.S. President Donald Trump. With this ban, Twitter was willing to apply its policies to a world leader who violated them, although at the end of his term. Its stalemate in India also pits it against a powerful world leader in an important market.

“Jack has shown in the past that he can lead with his values,” said Soundararajan, referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

But India, with more than three times the population of the United States and a very different social and political context, presents one of the most complicated challenges for Twitter outside its home country. In another apparent setback, the company also confirmed this week that its head of public policy for India, Mahima Kaul, will step down in April, after more than five years. (Twitter does not share user data for India, but third-party research suggests that the country is one of its largest markets.)

“The fundamental problem is consistency … are they able to do the same kind of contextual analysis that they did around QAnon posts, hydroxychloroquine posts and Trump incitement?” said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who previously served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. “India is a great example of how difficult this is.”

India, which calls itself the world’s largest democracy, must also gauge its response. Even while fighting with Twitter, the Modi government is waging a battle of perception with some of Twitter’s most prominent voices – the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently released a statement criticizing “hashtags and hyped social media comments, especially when appealed by celebrities and others, “after tweets about farmers’ protests by singer Rihanna and environmental activist Greta Thunberg went viral.

“I think there is still a risk for Modi in particular to appear unable to deal with some fundamental democratic principles like the right to peaceful assembly, the right to protest, the right to criticize and so on,” said Kaye. “I think it will be interesting to see if the Biden government and other governments, which are friends with India but are in the democratic field, really encourage the government to take a different approach here.”

– Manveena Suri and Esha Mitra from CNN contributed to this report.

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