Twitter Complies With The Government Of India to Remove BBC Documentary Film Content That Endows Narendra Modi

Twitter has followed the demands of the Indian government to stop the BBC documentary criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

JAKARTA - Tech companies, including Twitter, have followed suit by the Indian government to stop a BBC documentary criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As reported by The Intercept and TechCrunch, Twitter and YouTube have locally blocked The Modi Question, which investigates claims of Modi's involvement in India's deadly 2002 Gujarat riots.

This was one of Twitter's first run-ins with India under billionaire Elon Musk's ownership, but contrary to some writings, the documentary's ban is not an example of Musk's breach of his vocal "absolute free speech" ethos. It's a reminder that Musk has always been okay with government censorship.

Over the weekend, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting senior adviser Kanchan Gupta tweeted that Twitter and YouTube had complied with orders handed down by the Indian government, which called the BBC documentary "hate propaganda".

The documentary also appears to have been removed by the Internet Archive, although it is unclear whether this followed a request from the Indian government or a copyright complaint from its original owner, and the Internet Archive did not respond to an emailed request for comment filed by The Verge.

Twitter at least partially complied with India's very strict restrictions on social media long before Musk's acquisition, but only reluctantly after a raid on his office and with legal efforts to overrule it.

Musk, on the other hand, said he had no knowledge of the decision to censor Twitter links. "First I hear," Musk tweeted today in response to attorney David Freiheit's request for comment. “It would be impossible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter around the world overnight, let alone while still running Tesla and SpaceX.”

It's true that Musk has a lot going on, including an active securities fraud experiment and constant complaints from Tesla shareholders. Twitter, like other major tech companies, complied with free speech laws around the world prior to the acquisition, albeit with more resistance than Musk appears to have.

Yet it's quite open to say that readers may not have noticed that the world's largest democracy made a public statement that it had censored journalistic investigations.

The indifference is striking as Musk spent the last few months punishing Twitter's former leadership for allegedly colluding with various groups, including the US government, to suppress political speech.

However, it is also not surprising. Musk bought Twitter with the goal of making it a haven for free expression, but he has repeatedly said Twitter policy must be "conforming to the laws of the country", and the laws of many countries, including some US states, are increasingly hostile to free speech.

Twitter still appears to be in violation of government censorship laws, but by cost-cutting or negligence rather than by choice. The company was recently sued in Germany for not removing antisemitic hate speech, including Holocaust denial, which is illegal in the country.

If you take Musk in good faith, he said he believes government censorship reflects the will of the people, who can give voice to speech control in a way they can't for corporations.

If not, you may have noticed that Musk's businesses, Tesla and SpaceX, depend heavily on government goodwill, and he's probably not going to waste those good intentions on sustaining services that are costing money and buried in debt.

The third option is that he doesn't really care. While Musk is more interested in being seen as an anti-censorship figure, even his own moderation rhetoric around Twitter seems inconsistent, it is driven by very specific personal conveniences and beliefs.

It was an unfortunate fate for a service that once seriously considered the costs and benefits of content moderation worldwide and fought hard to defend its users' speech from government censorship. But right now, none of that is Twitter's biggest problem.