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Twitter’s fight against the Indian government has gone to legal instances, as the company has decided to take action in this regard.
The company joins WhatsApp, which had already gone to the Delhi High Court some time ago for a similar case.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of electronics and information technology, reaffirmed through a statement the commitment that companies must have with the laws of their country.
Twitter decided to take legal action against India for a law that prohibits the display of certain types of content. The company has been affected because it has been forced to remove accounts and tweets that may violate said law.
The company based in San Francisco, California it has faced recent problems, even before the as yet unfinished purchase by businessman Elon Musk. In 2021, for example, Twitter’s revenue amounted to more than US$5 billion; however, the company incurred a net loss of US$221 million.
Twitter to take legal action against India
Twitter reportedly decided to take legal action against the Indian government. This is because there is a recent order in that country to remove content from the platform and block accounts.
According to the information, the lawsuit filed in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore, it came after an alleged threat from the government in question to take criminal action against Twitter executives if they did not abide by established laws.
Tensions grew between the company and said government after New Delhi It will force her to block several accounts and publications within that country. Despite this, the social network did not give up and sought to take this conflict to its ultimate consequences.
As a reply, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of electronics and information technologyhad the following to say at a press conference earlier today: “It is everyone’s responsibility to comply with the laws approved by the country’s Parliament”.
Let’s remember that this lawsuit from Twitter goes hand in hand with the legal action that WhatsApp took. The company also rejects the country’s strict new Internet-related rules, which it has called oppressive.
Some analysts have pointed out that this is a strategy of centralization of power, since the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party They have worked for several years with the intention of reducing the power that technology companies have. Likewise, they point out that they seek to strictly monitor the trends of the digital pulse. At this point, the new information technology laws would be used to crack down on those who think differently.
The conflict with Twitter is due to the fact that the company has been asked to remove content related to protests, civil liberties, press freedom and mainly criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic. In addition to this, WhatsApp would have been asked to control the privacy of its content to make it much easier to track.
But not only that, because social media companies would have been asked to compulsorily employ executives based in India with the intention of monitoring the content effectively and so that the companies could comply with government requests for removal and blocking of content and accounts. As a result of this, WhatsApp went to the Delhi High Court with the intention of requesting the disqualification of said rule, although there has not yet been a resolution regarding said case.
However, these have not been the only legal battles that have been fought with respect to large technology companies. We have, for example, the case of Australia and the European Unionwhich have constantly passed laws in order to limit the growth of Google, Facebook and other giants.
This notably problematizes many interesting points: firstly, the fact that companies are getting more and more power and can have control of what is talked about on social networks; on the other hand, that governments can limit the content of networks could also be taken by many as an attack on freedom of expression.
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