Account Withheld: How Farmers Are Navigating Elon Musk-Owned X's Censorship

In just 11 days, Bhavjit Singh was restricted from operating five different X accounts. The reason? The Indian government asked Twitter to block it.

Four X accounts were of the popular handle ‘Tractor2Twitter’ and one was his personal account.

The account with the username @Tractor2twitr_P was started in June 2022 to bring forth issues of farmers in Punjab. It became popular and currently has over 23k followers. But on 13th February 2024, as the farmers’ protest gained pace, Bhavjit Singh received an email from Twitter saying that his account will be withheld in the country.

He started using another account @Tractor2twitr_i to post updates about the ongoing farmers’ protest. This account currently has ~3.5k followers. On 16th February, this account was withheld in India as well. On the same day, he received another email stating that his personal X account @bhavjitsingh_ will also be withheld in the country.

Two more accounts with the username @Tractor2twitr_d and @Tractor2twitr_n were created to share about the ongoing farmers’ protest but were eventually withheld by X because of legal demands by the Indian government. The accounts currently have around 1.7k and 600 followers respectively.

The farmers in India are demanding a legal guarantee for minimum support price for their crops among other things. Their protest march to Delhi started on 13 February 2024.

Decode found that social media accounts were being blocked even more when the march started, during the preparation phase of the protest, when farmers were sharing details about when and how to march to Delhi.

Decode could identify at least 24 X accounts of individuals and organisations posting content related to farmers’ protests that were withheld in India. Their combined follower count stands at over 17 lakh. These accounts remain inaccessible in India but can be accessed outside the country or by using a VPN. This not only includes accounts with a large following, but also accounts that had less than 1k followers.

The exact dates on which these accounts were blocked could not be ascertained, but it was found that all of them had posted content related to farmers’ protest between 5th February 2024 and 23rd February 2024.

However, the government has neither revealed the exact number of accounts and links that have been withheld nor has it revealed the reasons for censoring them.

The rampant blocking orders from the government prompted X to release a statement saying “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.”

“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 added.

The Account Blocking Saga

Decode spoke to several individuals whose accounts have been blocked.

Two accounts operated by Gurpreet Sangha were withheld as well, between 12th February and 24th February of this year, he told Decode.

When his first account (@FarmStudioz) with 7.5 k followers was withheld, he started operating another account (@FarmStudiozz), but that was eventually withheld as well.

“It (blocking of social media accounts) was happening at such a high speed that it felt like the government has an on/off switch in their office for social media accounts,” Gurpreet Sangha said.

“My second account only had 700 followers,” he said referring to how even accounts with low following and reach are being targeted for censorship. “There's no recourse for this,” he added.

X account of Tejveer Singh, a spokesperson for the Bhartiya Kisan Union – Bhagat Singh, was among the first to be blocked in the series.

“From 13th February, people who used the hashtag #DilliKooch on X or retweeted posts with this hashtag -- their accounts were blocked. There was a list of around 30 to 40. For example, accounts of ‘Tractor 2 Twitter’, Mandeep Puniya were amongst those.”

Blocking of social media accounts is not the only thing stopping farmers from sharing information online. At the sites of the protest in Haryana and Punjab, internet services were suspended.

In Haryana, internet services were suspended from 11 February 2024 to 24 February 2024, as per the orders of the Department of Home Affairs, Government of Haryana. Media reports suggest that these internet services have now been restored.

In Punjab, internet services were suspended on 11 February 2024 and remain suspended till at least 26 February 2024, as per orders issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

“It feels like a digital curfew. We feel digitally disconnected,” said Mahesh Choudhary, Media Coordinator, Kisan Majdoor Morcha (KMM).

His duties include managing media personnel, coordinating guests for debates and interviews, and sharing updates on social media.

“What we're doing on the ground is not shown on social media. We've to go 8-10 kms just to upload videos, meet media people, and use social media,” Choudhary told Decode.

Unable to join TV debates, make Zoom calls

“The media comes here but how they will interpret things is not in our hands. Now, to counter their narrative we record videos and upload them but now this has become difficult,”’ Choudhary said.

He also said that farmer leaders want to go on media debates but they are not able to do so because of the suspension of internet services.

Tejveer Singh said, “In the last protest, we would do Zoom meetings with different leaders of the unions. We would even go live from the protest site in TV debates before internet suspension”.

The author of this article was at the Shambhu border in Punjab on 23rd and 24th February, one of the sites of the protest, and was able to access the internet at a very slow speed of around 600 kbps.

The connection was quite unstable though. The speed was enough to send WhatsApp messages but not videos.

Countering false narratives

A common concern among those affected was their inability to counter false narratives on social media and mainstream media.

“Many times, social media and mainstream media gives a lot of wrong information. I was portrayed as a Khalistani once in the 2020-21 farmers’ protest. To counter this narrative, I uploaded a video on my account which got a lot of reach,” said Tejveer Singh.

Because of the suspension of internet services and blocking of social media accounts, it has become difficult for the farmers to counter such narratives.

“We want to show people that no one here is a deshdrohi (anti-national),” said Manjeet Singh of Bhartiya Kisan Union - Bhagat Singh. "They (the government) just want one-way information to flow. They want people with turban and beard to be labelled as terrorists. To give the farmers' protest a different colour, social media of farmers have been taken down so they can't counter misinformation,” he added.

Singh said that the right wing echo-chamber is constantly sharing misinformation where farmers are shown to be killing and raping people. But the government, he said, is not putting any effort to counter such misinformation.

“Mostly people don't know who to follow to get news related to farmers so we use a common hashtag,” Bhavjit Singh said. “BJP people started using those hashtags to post anti-farmer tweets. The hashtag we use to spread information, they start using it to put out negative content,” he added.

Not enough details about why accounts are blocked

The platform has turned into a breeding ground for disinformation targeting the protests. Many of the false or misleading claims BOOM fact-checked originated from verified right-wing X handles that have a track record for peddling disinformation on issues that show the government in a poor light.

Nearly verbatim text of false and misleading posts on X then go viral on other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Several old videos of pro-Khalistan protests in the United States have been shared linking them to the ongoing protests.

Other videos showing alcohol distributed at a large religious fair in Ludhiana, Punjab to devotees of Baba Rodu Shah, have been peddled as visuals showing protesters having a boozy party.

On the other hand supporters of the protests have revived old videos of police using excessive force in protests from previous farm agitations since the three farm laws were proposed.

Community Notes - X’s open-source initiative to slow down the spread of misleading posts, has been practically missing.

“Earlier when our accounts were blocked, it used to be focused on content, if some content was violating guidelines then we would be informed about it. Now they (social media platforms) are straight away saying that we're blocking your accounts because the government has asked to do so,” Choudhary told Decode

“In the last protest, Twitter would send us notices about certain content, and we would be asked to remove that content. We had removed some posts as well. But this time, accounts are getting blocked just for asking people to come for the andolan (protest),” said Gurpreet Sangha.

We've been using social media to spread our message since before 11 February, when the protests started, Sukhchain Singh, who helps with media coordination in Bhartiya Kisan Union - Shaheed Bhagat Singh, told Decode. “We uploaded videos making a call to people about the protests. These were viewed widely, some had 1 lakh views, some had 20,000 views – some of these accounts are now closed”, Sukhchain Singh said.

“People would respond to our call and join the protests. They would reach the protest site even before us because they had seen the social media posts," he added.

The Twitter spaces that they were organising from the official union accounts are not feasible to do anymore because the accounts are blocked.

Decode has reached out to X but we haven't got a response yet at the time of publishing this story.